


dear diary, i met a boy

by seventhstar



Series: Viktor Is Luna Lovegood: The AU [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Almost Kiss, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Jock Katsuki Yuuri, Long-Haired Victor Nikiforov, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nerd Victor Nikiforov, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pretending To Make Out As A Distraction, Quidditch, Ravenclaw Victor Nikiforov, Romantic Comedy, Slytherin Katsuki Yuuri, The Harry Potter AU This Fandom Deserves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-01-10 08:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12295827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: “I have to tell you—tell you something. It’s important.”“Tell me, then.”Yuuri leans in so close that their noses are touching.Oh, god,Viktor thinks,oh, god, this is not a drill.“If Slytherin beats Ravenclaw,” he asks, voice soft, “will you be my boyfriend?”+In which Yuuri is a Quidditch prodigy and Viktor is a nerd who wears beet earrings.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> I previewed this on tumblr a while back, so here it is: harry potter au. nerd viktor. jock yuuri. they're in love.

“Yura, look,” Viktor hisses. He grabs Yuri by the shoulder, and Yuri nearly bites off his hand like the angry kitten he is. Sometimes Viktor can’t believe they’re related. “It’s Yuuri Katsuki.”

“What about him?” Yuri asks. He would be a lot scarier, Viktor muses, if he wasn’t four feet tall (”I am not four feet tall, you dumbass!”) and didn’t turn beet red every time Yuuri nodded absently at him in the halls.

“He’s my _future husband,”_ Viktor says.

At the time, Viktor is sixteen, and Yuuri is one year younger. This will be an important year for both of them: Viktor will finally have a paper published in the wizarding world’s most prestigious magical theory journal, _Spark_ , and Yuuri will be made both a prefect and Quidditch captain. Viktor will convince a theorist in Bulgaria to fund his research into MFF (magical field formation), and Yuuri will lead his team to victory three times in three games and take Slytherin House to a flawless victory in the Quidditch Cup, for the first time in ten years.

By the time the end of the year rolls around, Viktor will not have convinced Yuuri to marry him, or date him, or go on a date with him, or furtively kiss him behind the greenhouses on their way to Herbology.

However, Yuuri does start letting him sit with him at lunch and hold his feet while he does (so many) crunches. Viktor counts it as progress.

“Step one is complete,” Viktor will announce on the train ride home. He and Yuri are changing into their street clothes; once they reach London, they’ll use a Long-Distance Appariation point to side-along with a Ministry official to the Russian Magical Ministry’s headquarters in St. Petersburg. Yuri will Floo home, after assuring Viktor that he despises him, even though he will show up on Viktor’s doorstep with the latest Quidditch Weekly and a keen interest in Muggle electronics the next day without fail. Viktor’s father will pick him up and drive him home.

“Dad, I met the love of my life,” Viktor announces as he climbs into the passenger seat.

“You found another book about linguistics and spell definitions?”

“I mean a _boy,_ Dad. The most beautiful boy in the universe.”

“Ah.” His father smiles. “That kind of love.”

\+ + +

“Phichit.” Yuuri tears open the letter with such force that he rips the paper. “Phichit!”

Phichit looks up from where he’s practicing yoyo tricks on the ceiling and sighs. “Is it Viktor?”

“He wrote me a letter.”

“He writes you every day.”

“This one is longer,” Yuuri breathes. “Did you know he dots his ‘i’s with little hearts?”

“You’ve only mentioned it ten thousand times.”

Yuuri settles back onto the bed with the letter. Viktor has his email address, of course, and his cell phone number; Yuuri might be a half-blood but he’s not that kind of half-blood. But Viktor is away for the summer at some kind of magical summer camp—Yuuri doesn’t really understand the details—and the campsite is still being run the traditional way, with magical forms of communication only.

 _I can get wifi in the village in the evenings,_ Viktor writes, _but the signal isn’t great. I’ll just have to send you a lot of letters to make up for it._

The letters are sent by Floo from Russia to Thailand using the International Magical Post, and then delivered locally by egrets. If he were at home, Yuuri would have to (fail to) conceal his excitement about Viktor’s letters from his family. Mari would laugh at him, when she wasn’t off breaking curses or taking her girlfriend on mountain-climbing dates in Peru.

But here in Phichit’s palatial home, he’s free to do what he wants, which is to painstakingly finish unfolding the letter, hold it up to the light, and read it one or two or seven hundred times.

Viktor writes using different colored ink every time, all of it glittery or metallic. The first half of his letter is usually about the weather, and his fellow campers, and how terrible the food is, and all the plants he’s seen with little doodles of each one. The second half is about whatever magical theory Viktor is currently studying, and is entirely incomprehensible; Yuuri has been taking the letters to the Bangkok Library of Magic on his days off to try to decipher their meaning.

Maybe if he can figure out what the hell Viktor is talking about, they can discuss it, and Viktor will realize that Yuuri isn’t an idiot, and he will let Yuuri furtively kiss him behind the greenhouses.

Or maybe he won’t, and Yuuri will spend this year like he spent the last, being followed around Viktor, listening to Viktor’s softly accented rambling about unified magical field theory and nargles, thinking about the way Viktor’s glittery lip gloss might taste. All of that is still better than Yuuri’s first year at Hogwarts at the tender age of fourteen, where he pined for Viktor from afar and didn’t have any friends.

He pores over the letter again. A boy can dream.

\+ + +

Viktor means to go down to the village and email Yuuri as soon as the day’s research is over, but he burns off half his left eyebrow and has to spend a good hour carefully regrowing it. The feathers dangling from his earrings are burnt, too, but just black around the edges; after some deliberation Viktor decides it’s a good look for him.

Unlike having asymmetrical eyebrows, which is a good look on no one.

“Do they look okay?” he asks Yakov. Yakov is supposed to be supervising Viktor.

“I told you, no experimenting with untested spells unsupervised!”

“I know, but I already did it, so what’s the point in yelling at me?” Viktor leans in close to the mirror. Is the left one a little arched? Is he going to look permanently sarcastic? “Is the left one too high?”

“They’re fine. Off with you. Don’t come back to the lab until morning.”

“Oh, Yuuri! I’m late!”

“Who is this Yuuri, anyways? Is he some boy you’re dating?”

“He’s the love of my life!”

“You’re too young to date!” Yakov calls after Viktor as he flees the lab and races across the campsite.

There’s a cafe with wifi in the village, and Viktor hurriedly plugs his cell phone into the wall and turns it on. He keeps it stowed away during his experiments, the battery popped out to keep it from getting fried. It turns on a glacial pace; Viktor bites the end of his ponytail impatiently.

He has new messages.

His mother wants to know if he’s eating enough and if he wants to come to a biotech conference—his father wants to know if he’s eating enough and if he should send more tea—and Yuuri has written—

_Have you read any good poems?_

Viktor squeals. He has, in fact, read a lot of good poems, mostly ones about the tragedy of unrequited love or consummating your love in a field under the stars. This is it—his chance to hint at his feelings to Yuuri.

_I need something for summer homework. Muggle Studies._

He nearly drops his phone in his haste to reply. _Yes! What kind of poems do you like? What language?_

_English please_

_Um just whatever you like is fine_

_I don’t know anything about poetry_

Viktor clicks his tongue. _Poetry is something you feel, Yuuri!_

Would it be weird if he sent Yuuri Neruda? If he sent Yuuri his personal copy of _Love Poems,_ the spine bent from too many dramatic late night perusals? If he lay in bed and read his back up copy while imagining Yuuri running his fingers over Viktor’s favorite lines?

If he texts his dad about it now, how long will it take for the book to reach Bangkok via IMP?

\+ + +

“Yuuri!” Mari yells down the hall. She sounds alarmingly like his Minako some days. “You’re going to miss your portkey to London!”

“I’m coming!” Suitcase half-packed (Yuuri has never understood the British wizard obsession with heavy wooden trunks), Yuuri is sitting on his bed surrounded by clean clothes and new books. He should be throwing everything into the bag so he doesn’t miss his train to Hogwarts.

Instead, he’s clutching a small, book-shaped package with his name written on it in Viktor’s loopy hand. Stamped over the address in red ink is a label in Japanese, marking the package as misdirected, which explains why Yuuri has spent the last two months obsessively checking the mail while his family snickers.

 _Did you get my book?_ Viktor texts him, every single day since he went back to Russia and reliable wifi. _I hope you like it!_

Yuuri’s anticipation has reached a fever pitch. A book from Viktor, picked especially for him; a book Viktor says is his favorite, with his writing in the margins and his favorite bits underlined. It’ll be a piece of Viktor’s brain for Yuuri alone, for him to examine at his leisure, without worrying about giving away how stupid in comparison to Viktor Yuuri actually is.

He takes off the brown paper wrapping, careful to preserve the bit with his name written on it.

_Love Poems_

_Pablo Neruda_

“Oh my god,” Yuuri says aloud. He opens the book and starts to read.

He gets halfway through the first poem before he has to close the book and bury his face in his hands.

Yuuri’s not even sure he understood any of what he read, but Viktor’s underlined three lines about sex in pink ink, and if he asks Yuuri about these poems Yuuri will probably die on the spot. And Yuuri has learned the hard way that Viktor loves talking about books and that’ll be the first thing Viktor asks him, assuming Yuuri hasn’t driven him off over the summer with his letters about playing Quidditch and not knowing what the three theories of spell definition are.

“Yuuri! Are you going to Hogwarts this year or not?”

“No!”

 


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The meeting is dull—mostly reminders about no magic on the train, the dress code, and the usual snobbery from the other Slytherin prefect, a pureblood who is perpetually offended that Yuuri, a half-blood, continues to exist in his direction.
> 
> Yuuri doesn’t know what his deal is. Being a half-blood is irrelevant; Yuuri acquired all his personal failings on his own, thank you very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are, my friends. chapter 2!

The Hogwarts Express is packed.

The train ride to school is one of Yuuri’s favorite things about attending Hogwarts. Mahoutokoro’s transportation has been modernized over the past twenty years (and will probably been further renovated while the school is being rebuilt). It’s faster, and more efficient, but Yuuri likes the way the train ride gives him time to shift his mindset from summer to school.

Also, last year Viktor promised him they could sit together on the train.

Yuuri is captain of the Slytherin quidditch team, which he thinks must be some kind of mistake, but which also means that his fellow players keep flagging him down to ask him questions about tryouts and training schedules. And he’s a prefect (which is even more baffling) which means he has to attend a meeting in the prefects’ car with the Head Boy and Girl before he can go get a seat.

“Yuuri!”

Phichit waves at him as he passes by his compartment. Phichit is doing his study abroad at Hogwarts this year, because his magical school in Thailand requires it. Yuuri’s pretty sure Phichit only picked Hogwarts because the annual meeting of the International Society of Wizarding Modernization is in London this year and Phichit’s capstone project involves magical wireless routers.

“Hey.” Yuuri stops. “Can I put my luggage in here? And Vicchan?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“And if you—if you see Viktor—”

“I’ll give him your love, yeah.”

“Phichit,” Yuuri hisses.

“Yeah, yeah. Hurry and go to your meeting, I need someone to hold my satellite dish.”

Yuuri winces. He remembers what happened to the last dish Yuuri had to hold. Can’t Phichit invent wizarding dial-up instead?

The meeting is dull—mostly reminders about no magic on the train, the dress code, and the usual snobbery from the other Slytherin prefect, a pureblood who is perpetually offended that Yuuri, a half-blood, continues to exist in his direction.

Yuuri doesn’t know what his deal is. Being a half-blood is irrelevant; Yuuri acquired all his personal failings on his own, thank you very much.

When he gets back to Phichit’s compartment, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Makkachin is there, and Vicchan is curled up on top of her, and they’re just adorable. The bad news is that Viktor is also there, talking to Phichit, and their conversation is totally incomprehensible. Yuuri understands individual words, like “interference” and “extrapolate” and “the”, but he has no idea what they’re actually saying. There go Yuuri’s plans to impress Viktor with his brain.

To add insult to injury, Phichit has stacked all his luggage on the seat next to him, the traitor. The only place left to sit is next to Viktor.

Yuuri solves the problem the only way he knows how—by sitting down on the ground and letting both the poodles jump on top of him.

“Yuuri!”

“Hi, Viktor.”

“Makkachin missed you, you know.”

“I missed her, too.” Yuuri did miss her—he didn’t bring Vicchan that first year, and Makkachin had free reign over the grounds while Viktor was in class, so sometimes when Yuuri was lonely he played with her.

“What about _me,_ did you miss me?”

“I guess,” Yuuri says. He doesn’t want to sound too eager; he hides his expression in Makkachin’s back.

When he looks up, Viktor is pouting. He pushes a strand of silvery hair that’s escaped his bun back behind his ear, where it promptly gets tangled with the chain of the dangling earring he’s wearing. A fat pink radishes hangs from each ear, level with Viktor’s chin. Instead of robes, he’s wearing a deep red cardigan over a white shirt and extremely skinny jeans. The laces on his boots are sparkly.

Yuuri has to look down at Makkachin again to cover up his drooling.

“Okay, we’re in range. Yuuri, hold his dish.”

“No.”

“I’ll hold it for you, Yuuri!”

“You’re holding for me—never mind. Viktor, hold this dish at a seventy-seven degree angle, facing west. Do not move it.”

“How do I account for changes in direction of the train?”

“That’s why we’re doing it now, the train isn’t going to turn for seventy kilometers. Yuuri, you’re gonna write down these readings.” Phichit hands him a phone. “Just record the speed every thirty seconds.”

“Got it.” Yuuri retrieved a notebook and pen from his bag. “Ready.”

“Ready!” Viktor adds.

“Five, four, three, two, one!” Phichit flips on his router and begins tapping it with his wand. “We’re online!”

The router begins to glow. The dish begins to vibrate. The app on Phichit’s phone begins spitting out numbers, which Yuuri writes down as the second hand of his watch turns. Two minutes pass, then five. The readings are steadily increasing.

Yuuri smells smoke.

“Uh,” Phichit says. “I might have miscalculated.”

“Not my eyebrows!”

Yuuri opens his mouth, lifts his head in time to see the router shudder, and immediately assumes the position they tell you to use in case of an airplane crash. Fragments of burning plastic rain over him. Viktor yelps at the same pitch as Vicchan does; Makkachin wuffles and doesn’t even flinch.

Phichit takes a deep breath. “Okay, that went better than expected.”

“It exploded,” Yuuri says.

“It didn’t explode immediately,” Viktor points out. “I sort of expected it to because of the new anti-technology spells on the train.”

“…the what now?” Phichit asks.

“The Hogwarts Board of Governors thinks letting students use their phones on the train might corrupt them.”

“Excuse me?”

“My mother wrote a very strongly worded letter to them in protest, but it doesn’t seem to have done much good.” Yuuri looks up and sees Viktor tap his lip in thought. Another strand of hair has escaped; it’s black at the end. “Maybe we should all write them!”

“On Howlers!”

Yuuri closes his eyes. This is a terrible idea. He doesn’t even like Howlers, and there is a hundred percent chance Phichit will make him write seven of them.

“I love Howlers! Did you know you can make them spit glitter!”

 _I can’t get expelled this year,_ Yuuri thinks, _Viktor doesn’t graduate until June._ He buries his face in dogs again.

 

* * *

 

The worst thing about Hogwarts is how rigid the classes are.

Viktor’s tired of having class with only other seventh years. He only went to school in Russia for two years, as a child, but even then he was allowed to move up into accelerated courses and to choose from a wider variety of electives. Admittedly, the accelerated courses and the ensuing bullying by Viktor’s older classmates is why his parents sent him to Hogwarts, where the classes were small and he’d have more peer interaction.

But still! Yuuri is a year under him, which means they never have class together. Viktor does his best to sit with him at meals, but it’s hard to get a seat when Yuuri is surrounded by throngs of admirers. Between quidditch practice and Viktor’s research, which he’s doing in lieu of all the classes he opted out of by taking his NEWTs at thirteen, Viktor’s daily Yuuri requirement is not being met. It’s an _essential_ part of his diet. He might _die._

The situation must be rectified, so Viktor brainstorms some solutions and proposes one over breakfast.

“We should sleep together!”

Yuuri chokes on his toast, and Viktor pounds him cheerfully on the back. “W-what?”

Several of the students sitting around them are glaring. Viktor ignores them.

“We should have a sleepover. Tonight! That way we can spend more time together.”

“Is that allowed?”

“I’ll bring Makkachin!”

“Okay.”

Yuuri has to leave then, something about homework for Muggle Studies (why does Yuuri have so much Muggle Studies homework? He’s a half blood), and Viktor helps himself to Yuuri’s half-eaten breakfast as he mentally reviews all his pajamas. Does he have anything appropriate to wear? What is appropriate to wear? Hmm.

This train of thought occupies Viktor all the way through his morning Arithomancy class and through his field measurements at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He can see Yuuri running around the lake; as Viktor wonders if there’s some legal way to track migration patterns of magical creatures in the Forest and if that interferes with field formation, he watches Yuuri complete lap after lap with the ceaseless determination of a Lethifold.

It’s hot.

Viktor has Care of Magical Creatures with Chris and Georgi, who are both in the same international magical cooperation initiative that Viktor is. They complain about Hogwarts for the first half of class before Georgi finally breaks down and starts crying about Anya. Again.

“Don’t cry, Georgi,” Viktor says. He scoops up a bowtruckle. “Look how cute this bowtruckle is!”

The bowtruckle bites Georgi so hard it draws blood.

“Well done,” Chris mutters as he conjures Georgi a tissue to stem the bleeding.

Georgi is telling them about how the pain of his finger is nothing compared to the pain of Anya dating that Hufflepuff Beater with the arms like spinach cans. Which, Viktor is sure Georgi’s heartbreak is real, but also that Beater’s arms are delicious, and also Viktor is tired of being the captive audience for Georgi’s poetry. He knows Georgi is aiming to go study the poetry of eighteenth century Russian wizards at the Moscow University of Magic, but still. There are only so many words that rhyme with Anya.

They sketch their bowtruckles, complete their anatomical diagrams, assure Hagrid that a rock cake will not make Georgi feel better, and head back to the castle. Viktor’s only afternoon class is Muggle Studies. Neither Chris or Georgi are taking it—Georgi is a half-blood, Chris needed the extra slot in his schedule for his capstone projest about wizarding psychology—so Viktor arrives alone.

The professor, Dr. Munich, is an absent-minded woman with green hair and frayed hems. Viktor likes to think of her as a kindred spirit; she, too, is misunderstood and unconventional. She insists on being called Dr. Munich, not Professor, because “I earned this goddamn Phd.”

“All right, class, settle down,” she says. “We’re starting our unit on Muggle Science today. Now, I understand that until recently, the curriculum for this course was focused on the superficial differences between muggle and wizard society. I do not feel that this is a productive course of study, so over the past two years, I have tried to make it a more challenging and content-heavy course.” She peers at them. “We have cover muggle history, and muggle culture so far. This year, we delve into chemistry, biology, and physics.”

Viktor has to stifle a squeal of excitement.

“To start with, turn to the student on your left and write down what you think science is for muggles and for wizards. You have five minutes.”

The classroom dissolves into chatter, most of it off-topic. Viktor turns to his left, pen in hand; it’s pink, since this is a class he likes.

“This is ridiculous,” the boy sitting next to him says. Viktor can’t remember his name. “Who cares about muggles?”

“It’s called Muggle Studies for a reason.”

“You would like it,” the boy says. He sneers. He’s wearing approximately twenty gallons of Sleekeazy’s, so Viktor decides his opinion doesn’t count. “You have fruit hanging from your ears.”

Viktor scowls. These are his favorite earrings, and not just because Yuuri told him he liked them while he was helping Viktor trim the burned ends of his hair on the train.

“These are beets,” he says.

“Why are you wearing beets as jewelry?”

“For emergency borscht,” Viktor says. “ _Obviously._ Now are you going to do the assignment or not?”

“I don’t care about muggle nonsense. You do it.”

“All right.”

Viktor writes two lines, one for each definition, and then spends the rest of their five minutes trying to devise a method of mapping unicorn grazing patterns and deciding whether it would be weird to bring his nail polish collection to their sleepover. Is he going to Yuuri’s dorm, or is Yuuri coming to his? Viktor ought to have asked.

He doesn’t really care if some guy in his Muggle Studies class thinks he’s a freak. But if Yuuri thinks he’s a freak…Viktor is going to have to apologize to Georgi. And then start writing terrible, angsty poetry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment please


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Wow.” Viktor leans forward. “Yuuri, can I interview you for my research project? This kind of thing is useful. It’s hard to get good sources about spell linguistics in other countries, and I don’t read Japanese.”
> 
> “Now?”
> 
> “Of course not! Right now we’re having our sleepover.”
> 
> “Okay.”

By the time evening rolls around, Yuuri has forgotten entirely about Viktor’s sleepover plans. Practice is brutal, and Yuuri still hasn’t figured out how he’s supposed to tell other people how to fly, and when he trudges into the dungeons, peels off his quidditch robes, and collapses on his bed, he nearly dies with relief.

Then he smells himself and decides that a shower is in order.

Slytherin House has been diminished over the past twenty years, due to the stigma of it being the ‘Voldemort house’. There are still hardline pureblood students who brag about continuing the family tradition, but the remaining students are a mix of exchange students and terrifyingly ambitious halfbloods and Muggleborns.

(Hogwarts has the largest proportion of exchange students in Europe, probably, Yuuri thinks, because every British student with half a brain has applied to go to school somewhere else. If their quidditch program wasn’t so robust, Yuuri would probably have let himself be shuffled to a regional program for distance learning until the Mahoutokoro renovations were complete.)

A small house means fewer students per room, and so Yuuri has managed to snag his own. It’s very small, taken up mostly by the bed, but it’s a place for him to be alone in case he has an anxiety attack or has to recover from the shame of existence or wants to jerk off at three am without biting a pillow to silence himself.

He lies on his soft, soft bed, stares at the emerald-colored hangings, and tries to muster up the energy to crawl towards the bathroom. On one hand, hot water and soap; on the other hand, sleep, right now. Forget homework. Homework is future Yuuri’s problem.

Viktor bursts into the room, arms full of dog, and Yuuri screeches like an angry vulture and hits his head on the headboard.

“Viktor!”

“I’m here! And look, I brought Makkachin.”

“How did you get in?”

“I put a Disillusionment Charm on myself and waited in the hall.”

Yuuri has to close his mouth, as there are too many questions in his mouth, like _isn’t that against the rules? Weren’t you worried about getting caught? What kind of Disillusionment Charm are you doing?_

Viktor is wearing dark blue pajama pants and a fuzzy pink sweater that’s falling off his shoulder. His hair is loose, and in addition to Makkachin he’s carrying a duffel bag. Yuuri takes several seconds to try to parse what disaster brought Viktor to his door while he’s lounging around sweaty and in his underwear before he remembers that he agreed to this.

“Oh.” Yuuri says, inadequately. He looks down at himself and flushed. “I have to shower.”

He snatches up Vicchan, who is asleep on the pillow, and flees.

What follows is the fastest, most thorough shower of Yuuri’s life. He scrubs everything—behind his ears, under his nails, the hard to reach place in the center of his back—before letting the scalding water steam away his nerves. He towels off his wet hair, wipes down his glasses, and realizes he ran into the bathroom without any clothes.

Which means that either Yuuri steps out of this bathroom and risks being naked in front of Viktor, or he stays in this bathroom until he dies of hunger. He’s now officially onboard with Phichit’s plan to bring wifi to wizards; he desperately needs to google ‘how long can you live without food?’ In the fogged over mirror, Yuuri prods his stomach. Is soap edible?

“Yuuri?”

Vicchan whines at the bathroom door, the traitor.

Yuuri wraps the towel around himself as tightly as it will go. It’s hard to breathe. His trunk is on the other side of his bed, far enough from the bathroom door that Yuuri has no choice but to emerge. He wishes he had his wand; a simple Accio would solve all his problems. As it is, Yuuri pushes his glasses up his nose, grips the doorknob, and mutters, “Vicchan, if I die, tell Mom and Dad I love them,” before plunging outside.

He scrambles over the bed so fast that he nearly loses the towel; he falls off the bed trying to get to his suitcase and hits his face on the wall. It stings, blood dripping from his nose, and Yuuri bites his lip as he wrenches open the bag and grabs the pajamas that are sitting folded on top.

“You’re bleeding!”

“It’s nothing!” Yuuri yanks the shirt over his head before clutching the pants to his chest. “I get hit in the face playing quidditch all the time.”

“All right.” Viktor is sitting between the bed and the door, near the fireplace. He looks pointedly away from Yuuri, at the wall, while Yuuri puts on his pants and hangs the towel up. He holds a tissue to his face, head tilted back; he’s tough, and the bleeding has already stopped.

Vicchan has climbed on top of Makkachin and is curled up on her back. Makkachin has settled herself in front of the fire in a pile of brown fluff.

“I’m done.”

“Okay!” Viktor shoves the duffel bag he brought with him at Yuuri. “What should we do first? I brought cards. And nail polish.”

“Nail polish?”

“Yes.”

Yuuri waits for an explanation, but Viktor just maintains the same bright smile. He’s playing with the strap of his bag, though, as if he’s…oh. Is Viktor nervous?

“What color is it?”

“Oh, I brought a selection. I didn’t know if you were a winter or a spring.”

Yuuri doesn’t know what that means. He never has any idea what Viktor means. But nail polish sounds okay; he hasn’t worn it since he was a kid and his sister did his nails in black to match hers, but it can’t hurt. And Viktor wears nail polish, so they can match, and if they’re doing each other’s nails, that will involve hand-holding.

Oh. Maybe this is a bad idea.

“I like winter,” he says, instead. The snowy winters at Hogwarts are very pleasant, compared to the howling storms that wrack Mahoutokoro.

“I do, too.”

Viktor produces a pink pouch from his duffel, and upends it on the carpet. There are fifteen or so bottles of nail polish there, muggle and wizarding brands, in a variety of colors. Viktor’s nails are currently the blue of Ravenclaw House, with one bronze nail on each hand; he takes out his wand from behind his ear and taps each nail with it, vanishing the polish without a word.

“You can do wordless spells?”

“Just a few! It’s easier with spells I know well, though. This is one of the first ones I learned. What about you?”

“I’m okay at wordless spells.”

Viktor laughs. “You’re great at wordless spells, I’ve seen you. But what was the first spell you learned?”

Yuuri isn’t great at wordless spells, although he enjoys them. He likes being able to do magic without declaring his intentions beforehand, and he finds that it’s easier to do more complex spells when he only has to focus on the wand movement and not pronunciation. Yuuri’s English is very good, but he still sometimes can’t quite pull off Latin Standard, and Hogwarts doesn’t teach any spell language besides that one.

“A Boiling Charm,” he says. One of the bottles of polish is candy-apple red; Yuuri picks it up.

“Really?”

“It’s traditional in our family.”

“That’s right, because of your hot springs.”

“And it was helpful at home, too. I could make tea and warm up food for the guests if we were busy…”

Yuuri trails off. He’s gleaned enough about Viktor’s parents from his letters to know they’re well off. The Katsukis aren’t exactly poor, but as the last of the hot spring resorts in Hasetsu, there’s a certain edge during tourist season in the inn. If they need an extra hand for a few days, Yuuri’s always known it would fall to him before they gave the business to a temporary employee. The snobby purebloods in Slytherin House would turn their noses up even more if they knew.

“My parents like me to use magic at home to help out too,” Viktor says easily. “Not too much, though. It interferes with the electronics. That’s why I started branching out into magical field studies from spell linguistics.”

He selects a bottle of dark blue polish and sighs.

“Pick for me?”

Yuuri deliberates. He has no idea what criteria Viktor uses to decide what color his nails are, only that Viktor changes them almost every day and that his nails always look flawless. So he just picks the color he likes best.

“This one.” He hands Viktor a very pale pink.

“Okay.”

They spread out a towel on the carpet, between their crossed legs, and Viktor holds out both his hands. He has a tiny cut over one knuckle and a burn on his left thumb. Yuuri is careful not to touch either of them as he holds Viktor’s fingers, one by one, and paints each nail with the tiny brush.

It takes an endless amount of time. Yuuri does his best not to get any on Viktor’s skin, and so he paints in the smallest possible strokes, gripping Viktor’s fingers firmly to get a clean line between finger and nail. Viktor’s hands are cold, and Yuuri resists the urge to simply grab them and hold them tightly until they’re a normal temperature. That would be weird.

He has to stop more than once to discreetly wipe his clammy palms on his pants.

“Sorry, it looks bad…”

“It’s fine.” Viktor picks up his wand again and begins siphoning away excess polish. “Let me dry them and I’ll do yours.” He casts another spell or two on his hands, flexes the fingers, tests the back of a nail against the towel to see if it smears, and then beams. “It looks really good.”

“Thanks.” Yuuri hurriedly pushes the bright red polish at him and then thrusts out his hands. Unlike Viktor, he has calluses from holding a broom and scratches from cleaning the balls and trimming the tails. At least, since he showered, there’s no broomstick grease under his nails.

Viktor puts Yuuri’s hand on his knee, steadying it with his freezing fingers, and starts painting.

He’s lot better at it than Yuuri is, but for some reason, it still takes him a long time. Yuuri doesn’t mind; he sits in silence as Viktor applies a second coat to each nail after magically drying the first, and as Viktor leaves his hand on top of Yuuri’s wrist even after he’s done and the nails are dry. It occurs to Yuuri that Gryffindor colors are a bad idea, considering the upcoming match and the house rivalry, but Viktor makes an admiring noise as he examines Yuuri’s hands and Yuuri forgets all about it.

“You should put a Topcoat Charm on them so they don’t chip,” Viktor says.

“I don’t know how,” Yuuri admits.

“It’s easy.” Viktor says an incantation in what sounds like Russian and taps the back of Yuuri’s hand with his wand. “See?”

“Was that, uh, Soviet Standard?”

“That’s right!”

“What’s the Latin Standard incantation?”

“No idea,” Viktor admits. “Latin Standard is a stupid spell language.”

“It’s the worst. And not all of the spells are based on Latin! It should be called English Standard.”

“You use the Japanese variation of Chinese Standard at home, right?”

“Well, sort of. There’s variation in pronunciation regionally, too. There’s not as much focus on incantations in Japan.”

“How do they teach spells, then?”

“My teacher explained it like this. The magic is inside your heart.” Yuuri taps his chest. “And it flows down your veins, down your arm, into your wand through your hand. You’re supposed to visualize the magic building up between the bones in your arm, and when you move your wand—” he flicks his wand at the bed, making the covers fly up and down, “—it’s released. The words and the movements are supposed to be adapted individually.”

“Wow.” Viktor leans forward. “Yuuri, can I interview you for my research project? This kind of thing is useful. It’s hard to get good sources about spell linguistics in other countries, and I don’t read Japanese.”

“Now?”

“Of course not! Right now we’re having our sleepover.”

“Okay.”

Yuuri hasn’t had a sleepover since he was a kid. Yuuko and Takeshi stayed over when he was younger, and Yuuri has visited friends like Phichit for longer periods and stayed at their houses. But Viktor’s enthusiasm for this evening suggests he has some preconceived ideas about what’s supposed to happen, and that makes Yuuri nervous—if he turns out to be unfun, will Viktor not like him anymore?

“So, what do we do next?” Viktor asks. “I have cards. And I brought my Muggle Studies homework.”

“You’re in Muggle Studies?”

“The headmaster said I had to take a minimum of three classes.”

“Oh.”

Yuuri’s not sure what he means. He has noticed that Viktor isn’t in a lot of the mandatory classes, and that he doesn’t spend a lot of time studying for the ones he’s in. One of the Hufflepuffs in Viktor’s Arithmancy class complained that all Viktor ever did in that class was argue with the professor, and that Viktor did it to cover up the fact he didn’t understand Arithmancy.

That seems unlikely to Yuuri. Maybe the requirements for Russian schools are different, or they have a longer period of schooling, or maybe Viktor doesn’t need any NEWTs.

“You’re in Muggle Studies, too, so I thought we could do the homework together. You’re always saying you haven’t finished it. I can help you.”

That’s a lie—Yuuri is only in Muggle Studies because it seemed like the easiest elective—but he’s not going to admit this to Viktor and fulfill the quidditch player stereotype. Besides, if Viktor is tutoring him in Muggle Studies, they’ll have an excuse to keep hanging out. They can study in the back of the library. They can stare at all the couples making out in the stacks and maybe their presence will subliminally inspire Viktor to kiss him.

“Sure.”

Viktor takes out his notebook and gel pens, while Yuuri gets his binder and pencils out of his school bag. A lot of the professors insist on ink and parchment, but Yuuri mastered the spell that transfers his handwritten notes to the parchment in his first year at Hogwarts. He can even adjust the size of his writing to meet the length requirements.

Yuuri’s assignment is an essay on wizard involvement in World War II and if it was moral. His professor agreed that he was allowed to write about it from the Japanese perspective; Yuuri finished it yesterday. Viktor is working on an explanation of how chemistry and potions compare; he’s brought six books to use as references.

“I had to leave the rest of them in my dorm. They’re heavy.”

“Oh.” _I could have carried them for you,_ Yuuri thinks. He stares at his red nails.

“Let’s finish our essays and then we can proofread each other’s,” Viktor says. “And then we can play Truth or Dare!”

“What?”

“That’s what we’re supposed to do, right? I’ve never been invited for a sleepover before. Well, Yurio’s stayed with us a few times, but that doesn’t count, all he does is complain and eat.”

Yuuri’s only experience with Truth or Dare is that one time he and Phichit got into the Chulanont wine cellar, pilfered a bottle, and got smashed. Most of the night is a blur, but Yuuri does remember Phichit daring him to climb a flagpole and that he woke up with chafed thighs and his underwear flying in place of the flag.

That was a sad day.

Viktor looks hopeful. He’s never had a sleepover before, he says; what is Yuuri supposed to do, ruin this one for him?

“Yeah, okay.”

He bends his head over his binder and starts writing. It’s completely unnecessary, but he can take breaks every few minutes. He can look at Viktor, who is scribbling away in dark green ink. He can watch Viktor’s hair trail across the paper as it falls out from behind his ears and Viktor pushes it back. He’s paying absolutely no attention to what he’s putting on the page.

…his second attempt at this essay is going to be a lot worse than his first.


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Truth or dare.”
> 
> “Dare.”
> 
> “Lick your elbow.”
> 
> “That’s physically impossible.”
> 
> “If you can’t complete the dare you have to pick truth!”
> 
> “That’s cheating!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _slaps this down_

“Truth or dare.”

“Dare.”

“Lick your elbow.”

“That’s physically impossible.”

“If you can’t complete the dare you have to pick truth!”

“That’s cheating!”

“But you always pick dare,” Viktor protests. “How can I find out all your deepest, darkest secrets if you never pick truth?”

“Why do you _need_ my deepest darkest secrets? …not that I have any.”

They’re spread out on the bed together. Yuuri’s pajamas are cute; the pants have a hole near the knee, worn straight through the plaid. Viktor keeps thinking, vaguely, that he ought to put his hair up and then forgetting. The lights are out, and the room is dim, and the dogs are snoring, and Yuuri is so close that if Viktor were bolder he could reach out and touch him.

Yuuri is full of fascinating facts, like that his favorite color is blue and his favorite season is winter and he likes to get into the hot springs in the worst of summer, just for a minute, because it makes the oppressive heat of Hasetsu feel cold. Viktor wants to map him like unicorns in the forest, define him like the boundaries of a magical field, savor his everything the way he does with a good book late at night under the covers.

Instead he lays his arm between them, hand open.

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do at sleepovers?” he asks. “Cement your friendship by exchanging all your deep dark secrets, like who your crush is or how many boys you’ve kissed or whether you’ve gotten to second base—”

Yuuri chokes loudly.

“Second base?”

“Yes.”

“…which one is that?”

“I have no idea,” Viktor admits. “One of the American research interns at camp last year kept bragging about it.”

“Oh.” Yuuri shifts in place on the bed. “If we had wifi at Hogwarts, we could look it up.”

“If we were in my dorm, we could ask Chris.”

“Google wouldn’t _judge_ us.”

“True.”

They lapse into silence. Viktor listens to Yuuri breathe. After they finished their essays they looked over each other’s; Yuuri’s was a bit disorganized, but his argument was solid. Yuuri found a discrepancy in Viktor’s thesis, and three typos besides. Then they played Solitaire against each other, seeing who could finish first. Finally Viktor offered to unroll his sleeping bag, and Yuuri flushed and insisted Viktor take the bed, and they began their sadly tame game of Truth or Dare.

And now here they are. Viktor can’t help but feel like Yuuri is holding back from him, somehow. He wants to crack him open, but it’s like looking for a hidden door in a wall; he’s knocking on Yuuri’s heart and looking for the tell-tale hollow sound.

“Well?”

“Huh?”

“Tell me about your first love!”

“No.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you about my first love!” Maybe Yuuri will be more comfortable if Viktor goes first. “His name was Stephane. He was French—he was presenting at the International Magical Theorist Society’s Annual Meeting—he had an accent—”

“Viktor—”

“He autographed a copy of his thesis for me.”

“That’s…” Yuuri swallows loudly. “He sounds smart.”

“He’s a genius.”

“Is that your type? Smart people?”

“Of course. What about you?” _Are you attracted to excitable magical theory nerds?_

When Yuuri doesn’t answer, Viktor shifts his hand over two centimeters until it’s just touching Viktor’s own.

Yuuri jumps.

“It’s your turn now!” It’s not, but that’s fine. Viktor catches Yuuri’s fingers in his. “How many boys have you kissed?”

“Uh.”

“…girls?”

“Both. Two. One of each. I was ten.”

Yuuri is staring determinedly at the wall, face turned away from Viktor; he must be embarrassed. Viktor is more thrilled than anything else. Based on the number of people waxing poetic over Yuuri’s thighs every time he gets on a broom, Viktor assumed he had to have kissed someone. Someone who’s never had ‘freak’ or ‘weirdo’ written on their homework or painted on the door of their dorm room, someone who’s never had their hair stuck to their desk with chewing gum every day for two weeks straight.

(Viktor can do an excellent hair growing charm now.)

Viktor licks his lips and squeezes Yuuri’s hand in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. He’s holding Yuuri Katsuki’s hand. They’re talking about kissing. If this were a movie, Viktor thinks, this would be the moment where one of them confessed a burning passion, but in Viktor’s experience real life is distressingly prone to going awry.

“That’s really it?”

“So what if it is? How many people have _you_ kissed?”

Viktor considers. “Well…”

“…do you not _know?”_

Despite himself, Viktor colors. “It didn’t count. We were just practicing. You know. We got into our supervisor’s firewhiskey…we were all stuck in the lab overnight…someone suggested we refine our technique for science…” He notes the noise of shock Yuuri makes, which is either appalled or intrigued, and decides to change the subject. “Does that mean you haven’t jumped second base?”

“Rounded.”

“What?”

Yuuri shrugs and rolls over so that he’s facing Viktor again. “You round bases, you don’t jump them.”

“Round,” Viktor repeats. “How did you know that?”

“My dad is big on baseball.”

Viktor makes a mental note of this, for if (when) he gets to meet the Katsukis.

“It’s quiet down here,” he says.

“Is it noisier in your dorm? Aren’t you in a tower?” Yuuri asks.

“There’s wind. And sometimes experiments go wrong. And we can hear the Gryffindors if we leave the window open.”

“Are they still all getting discounts at Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes?”

“Unfortunately.”

“You can hear the mermaids sing, sometimes, if you stay up late. We might even hear them tonight—” Yuuri breaks off. He grips Viktor’s hand tightly and whispers, “Hear that?”

Viktor props himself up onto his elbow and puts his ear to the window. He can hear something, faint and keening and unearthly. He fumbles for his wand, which is on the nightstand, and conjures up two glasses. He puts on against the window and puts his ear against it, then passes the other to Yuuri.

The singing is much clearly through the glass; Viktor can feel it vibrating in his jaw. It’s mournful, and high-pitched and entirely inhuman. It’s beautiful. He wishes he knew Mermish, so he could understand what they were saying. What could make someone so sad? Or are they happy and Viktor just doesn’t know it?

He glances a look at Yuuri’s face—his eyes wide and delighted in the gloom, lips parted—and sighs.

“It’s like poetry,” Viktor whispers.

“…in love you…you have loosened yourself like wat—like sea water,” Yuuri says, so softly Viktor’s not sure he was meant to hear.

 _Neruda._ Yuuri read it; Yuuri remembered it; Yuuri noticed where Viktor underlined his favorite parts. Viktor nearly swoons right there and then; he has to look determinedly out into the blackness of the lake to hide his blush.

Maybe the mermaids are singing about love after all.

* * *

“So,” Viktor says, twirling his gel pen in his fingers. His earrings are strings of heart shaped beads, long enough that they touch his shoulders; they refract flecks of pink light onto Viktor’s neck. “What do you need help with?”

Yuuri swallows. Never has he regretted more arranging this study session of lies. He already had to skip the first ten minutes of Charms to panic in the bathroom about the upcoming match; the last thing he needs is to be spending his free time studying for the one class he’s acing.

But Viktor just looks so pleased. (And pretty.) And if he’s tutoring Yuuri, they can see each other every week. Yuuri sighs inwardly; Phichit’s advice, to ‘man up and just tell him you like him and ask him to come over and sign my petition and possibly join my guerilla warfare campaign against the tyranny of the Hogwarts Board of Governors’, is beginning to sound reasonable.

Hah! Who is he kidding. Viktor’s admitted to Yuuri he goes around kissing boys for practice, Yuuri does not want to risk becoming the kiss horror story Viktor tells his future husband.

(Yuuri is rapidly reevaluating his mental image of Viktor’s summer time activities. He’s assumed that Viktor’s spending time wearing goggles and a lab coat; he’s now imagining something much more sordid. Quidditch camp is _never_ like that.)

“I…uh…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you need help with?”

Yuuri shakes his head. He’s all in.

“I don’t know anything,” he says.

“…aren’t you a half-blood?”

“Yes?”

“Well, we can go over your last essay.”

Yuuri rummages around in his bag until he produces the crumpled essay, only to realize he got ninety-eight percent on it. Viktor plucks it from his hand before he can rectify his mistake and unfolds it. He frowns.

“But you did so well on this!”

“I…get nervous on exams,” Yuuri says. This isn’t even a lie. Yuuri does get nervous on exams, particularly the practical portions. However, the Muggle Studies exams are always written and usually straightforward. Yuuri has done well on all of them.

“Oh, okay. Um…we can go over the practice exam? Dr. Munich always hands out an old test beforehand.”

“Great.”

Yuuri doesn’t have the practice test with him. Viktor doesn’t, either, since he’s in the seventh year class. He says he might have his exam from last year in his dorm, and offers to get it. Yuuri has no desire to send Viktor out of the library.

“We can just do our regular homework?”

“Sure, I have to chart these unicorns.”

Yuuri has Charms homework, which he’s struggling with, so he takes it out and tries to look intelligent while he flips frantically though his books. Meanwhile, Viktor spreads out an enormous map across the table, one with a number of sequins stuck to it, and began poking it with his wand and making notes in a little moleskin.

It becomes clear to Yuuri that he has no hope of finishing his assignment before it’s due. Part of the revised Hogwarts curriculum includes year long projects, a different subject every year, and Charms is Yuuri’s tormentor this time. These projects are loaded with extra work, involve a presentation at the end of the year, and are displayed all through the next year on the walls. To add insult to injury, Yuuri picked broomsticks as his topic but, despite being a quidditch player, cannot understand anything he’s read.

This book on flying charms is impossible; the prose is about as penetrable as dragon hide. Yuuri groans and slams it closed. Maybe if he just reads _Quidditch: A History_ one more time, it will all become clear.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Yuuri could recite the chapter on Japan in _Quidditch: A History_ from memory. There’s a photograph of a previous Japanese team there, with Minako in the middle. The same picture is in Minako’s locker room; she teaches beginner’s level classes at the Nishigori’s pitch now. It’s familiar and soothing.

On the other hand, Viktor’s pale pink nails tracing abstract shapes over the map, a strand of silvery hair in his mouth, are new, exciting, and remind Yuuri that last night he fell asleep with Viktor’s hair all over the pillow and in Yuuri’s eyes and over his neck. That last night Viktor held his hand. That this morning when Yuuri woke, they’d rolled over so that they were facing each other, noses very close.

It’s deeply unfair that Yuuri is not a Legilimens, because he wants to know what Viktor is thinking.

This plan to impress Viktor is not working.

“So, um, why are you tracking unicorns?”

“Oh, it’s for my capstone, I’m trying to map Hogwarts’ magical field.”

Yuuri flushes. “…what do unicorns have to do with that?” He tries to recover. “The magical field is because of all the spells, right?”

“Well, sort of. No one really knows why magical fields cause the interruptions in physics that they do. We know that the frequency and the chronicity of spellcasting has an effect, but it’s hard to duplicate in the lab, since fields like the one at Hogwarts are so old.” Viktor taps the table with his gel pen. “So I’m trying to create a better map of the field by recording different factors. Like whether magical creatures—like unicorns—affect the field.”

“How do you track the unicorns? I thought they were shy.”

“They are shy! I had to sleep in the woods all weekend until they got used to me. And I gave them a lot of sugar cubes.”

The image of Viktor lying on the forest floor, being nuzzled by unicorns—in Yuuri’s imagination Viktor is lying in a flowery meadow in the moonlight wearing a princess dress—makes Yuuri’s mouth dry. He bets Viktor looked beautiful with twigs in his hair, feeding unicorn foals sugar and probably naming them all. Yuuri’s only seen a unicorn once, in Care of Magical Creatures, and they shied away from him. They could sense anxiety, the professor had told him.

He peers at Viktor’s map. Now that he’s no longer so distracted by Viktor himself, he can see that it’s the Forbidden Forest, with tracks and trails marked with dotted lines. The silvery sequins must represent the unicorns; they’re dotted in little clumps throughout the Forest. Every once in a while a few of them will move.

“What about you?”

“Huh?”

“Your capstone?” Viktor asks. He’s putting on lipgloss, dabbing it onto his lips from a little pot he has cupped in his palm. It smells like strawberry. Yuuri wants to know if it tastes like strawberry. There’s a bang from behind a nearby shelf; either Georgi and his girlfriend have made up again or someone’s irritated one of the more temperamental books. God, Yuuri wishes he had the guts to kiss him. “Yuuri?”

The truth spills out while Yuuri’s brain is distracted by Viktor’s pout.

“It’s supposed to be about broomsticks but I’m dumb and have no idea what I’m doing,” Yuuri admits. “I’ve read six books and I still don’t get it. I’m going to fail and be expelled and have to become a janitor at the Ministry of Magic in Siberia.”

“You need a passing grade in Charms to be a wizard janitor.”

“Oh.”

Yuuri stares at his blank sheet of paper, where no notes have been taken, and wonders if it would be rude to set something nearby on fire so he can escape.

“Do you need help?”

“Not unless you can make me smarter.”

“You’re smart!” Viktor says. Yuuri snorts. “Let’s talk it through. What about broomsticks are you focusing on?”

“Just the combination of charms they use to make them work, I guess…? I’m supposed to be writing a paper to explain.”

“But that’s boring!”

“What did you do for your Charms capstone?” Yuuri asks, desperate to change the subject. He already knows the answer; Viktor had made five magical poodles who looked just like Makkachin out of different materials. One had been made of clouds, one of wood, one of fire, one of stone, and one of light. The idea, he’d explained in the accompanying poster (it had been displayed in the Great Hall and Yuuri had snuck out after curfew to study it) was to see if the same charm worked differently on different materials.

“Oh, I made poodles! Makkachin was my model. She was so cute, I kept getting distracted, and they wouldn’t even let me keep them afterward. Apparently a poodle made of fire was ‘dangerous to the student body’.”

Despite himself, Yuuri smiles. He bets Viktor tried to pet the fire poodle.

“I wish I could…” Yuuri trails off. _I wish I could make a broomstick,_ he was going to say, and then it occurs to him: why can’t he? He could take a more practical approach, at the very least. Broomstick manufacturing is a very secret art nowadays, with most manufacturers refusing to reveal the exact combination of spells they use, but one of the books Yuuri read did have a diagram with a general list of the essentials. He could compare the one he makes to the models used by his classmates.

He could stop trying to read this book.

“You look like you’re having a good idea,” Viktor says. He’s smiling. He flaps his hands around Yuuri’s head, presumably to get rid of wrackspurts.

“You’re a genius,” Yuuri says, heartfelt. “I know exactly what I’m going to do. Do you know anything about broomsticks?”

“I read a few papers about the spell layering, but otherwise no. I can’t fly very well.”

“What?”

“There’s not much place to practice at home.”

“You can’t _fly?_ But—” Yuuri flounders. Viktor is so deprived. Yuuri spends a lot of his summers at the Nishigori’s quidditch pitch, where he can be alone and free in the air. How can anyone spend their entire lives stuck on the ground? “I could teach you. You know, as a thank you! For the tutoring and everything.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah. Do you have a broom?”

“No.”

“Well, you can use mine,” Yuuri says, and tries not to stutter as he imagines his broomstick between Viktor’s legs. “And, um, we can meet after practice tomorrow night. If you want. If you don’t mind. I’ll be sweaty.”

“That sounds,” Viktor swallows, possible in disgust. Yuuri makes a mental note to shower beforehand. “Great. I’ll see you then. And we can meet at the same time next week for Muggle Studies! I’ll bring an old exam for you.”

He holds out a hand, and Yuuri takes it. Viktor runs his thumb over the back of Yuuri’s hand, his fingertip like a static shock against Yuuri’s skin, like the tingle of magic.

“It’s a date!” Viktor winks.

Yuuri trips over himself twice as he gathers his things and flees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment i have so many wips and so many hours to spend not writing them
> 
> The poem Yuuri quotes is "In You The Earth" by Pablo Neruda. The translation I used is by Donald Walsh.


	5. five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri tells Phichit about his project idea that evening, and Phichit tells the members of the Hogwarts Appreciating Technology Society, and by the time Yuuri sits down at one of the four tables for lunch two days later, everyone has followed his lead. There are still students who want to write the traditional six foot essay and give the five minute oral report on their findings to the class, but not many. Phichit is going to try for a working prototype of his router, one of the Gryffindors is making his own wand, a pair of Hufflepuffs decide to compare house elf magic to human magic, and the snotty Slytherin prefect who hates Yuuri declares he’s going to prove that ‘the dilution of magical blood weakens the magical ability’. 
> 
> “Okay, Riddle 3.0,” Phichit had said while Yuuri gaped. “Have fun with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter brought to u by viktor nikiforov cuddling a baby animal.
> 
> ...i have Needs, okay?

Yuuri tells Phichit about his project idea that evening, and Phichit tells the members of the Hogwarts Appreciating Technology Society, and by the time Yuuri sits down at one of the four tables for lunch two days later, everyone has followed his lead. There are still students who want to write the traditional six foot essay and give the five minute oral report on their findings to the class, but not many. Phichit is going to try for a working prototype of his router, one of the Gryffindors is making his own wand, a pair of Hufflepuffs decide to compare house elf magic to human magic, and the snotty Slytherin prefect who hates Yuuri declares he’s going to prove that ‘the dilution of magical blood weakens the magical ability’.

“Okay, Riddle 3.0,” Phichit had said while Yuuri gaped. “Have fun with that.”

At least Hogwarts no longer has rigid rules about seating at meals and all the purebloods can congregate in their corner. Yuuri piles all his stuff on the bench next to him, then plops Vicchan on top of it, just so that Viktor can join him. For some reason, Yuuri always manages to pick the most crowded place to sit, and he’s found that unless he guards a spot with a vengeance, there’s nowhere left to sit beside or across from him within five minutes of lunch beginning.

“Woof,” Vicchan says. A bowl of dog food appears on the table, and Yuuri puts it in front of him to eat.

“Do you think your parents could smuggle me some circuit boards?” Phichit asks.

“…I guess?”

“I think it’ll be less suspicious if not all the parts are shipped to me.”

“Suspicious?” Yuuri squints at Phichit. “I thought these parts were for your Charms project.”

“Just get a box at the post office in Hogsmeade,” Viktor says. He’s appeared out of nowhere; Yuuri has to remind himself there’s no Apparation on Hogwarts grounds. Yuuri shoves his bag onto the floor as Viktor scoops up Vicchan, sits down, and puts the poodle in his lap. Vicchan submits happily to ear scratching while he eats.

“Yeah, but then I have to wait until I get down to Hogsmeade to get my stuff.”

“Mmm.” Viktor piles his plate with beets and steak. “Well, I would never encourage you to use your free period in the afternoon to sneak down to Hogsmeade to pick up your mail.”

“The post office guy would know.”

“I’m not saying he takes bribes,” Viktor says. He feeds Vicchan a bit of steak. “But I am saying he really likes Ice Mice.”

Phichit lifts his eyebrows at Yuuri, who can hear the sound of an ill-advised trip to Hogsmeade in his future. Yuuri likes going down to the village, but there’s only so much butterbeer one can drink, and the shops don’t have the selection of Diagon Alley, let alone the underground magical malls in Japan or the flying outdoor bazaars of Thailand. Besides, every time Yuuri goes to Hogsmeade, people try to convince him to have tea at Madam Puddifoot’s. Madam Puddifoot’s is for couples. There must be an epidemic of stood up dates at Hogwarts; why else would people keep asking Yuuri to go?

“Ice Mice freak me out,” Phichit says. “They look too much like my kids.”

“That’s how I feel about those tiny dog-shaped lemon drops,” Viktor says. “They’re delicious, but what if Makkachin sees them? What if her feelings get hurt?”

Yuuri has eaten boatloads of the dog-shaped lemon drops. He has eaten a Titanic’s worth of dog-shaped candies, in every fruit-related flavor, ranging from strawberry-banana to persimmon-grapefruit to eggplant-tomato. And Vicchan has seen it all.

While Yuuri is guiltily feeding Vicchan all his bacon (“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I would never eat a real dog,”) Viktor is eating the last of his beets. His lips are stained red by their juices; a drop runs down from the corner of his mouth. Yuuri’s mouth waters. He doesn’t even _like_ beets.

“Aren’t you going to eat, Yuuri?”

Yuuri stares down at his plate, which contains rice, eggs, and a few sad pieces of honeydew. For some reason, Viktor looking at him makes him nervous about eating, but Yuuri is hungry. He shovels the food into his mouth as fast as possible. The house elves at Hogwarts make terrible rice, but Yuuri misses rice.

Besides, Yuuri’s supposed to be eating well. Their first match, Slytherin versus Gryffindor, is coming up. Gryffindor’s team is a little weak this year—their two star players have graduated—according to Yuri, who’s taken it upon himself to spy on them from under the stands. Yuri Plisetsky is one of the Ravenclaw players, but he has a long-running rivalry with JJ, an exchange student from Canada who is the new captain of the Gryffindor team. As Yuri had put it, “I hate JJ even more than I hate you.”

Yuuri has no idea why Yuri claims to hate him. Yuri is a star player despite his age and small size; he’s already rumored to be attracting scouts from professional teams. Surely he doesn’t see Yuuri as a rival? Phichit had teased Yuuri that Yuri had a crush, but Yuuri can’t see it. Yeah, Yuri is vitriolic towards Viktor, but that doesn’t mean he _likes_ him. Besides, Yuri is in Viktor’s House and lives in his home city; why would he see Yuuri as a rival for Viktor’s affections?

The rice tastes like sawdust. Yuuri sucks in air through his nose; the match is two weeks from now. That’s plenty of time. He doesn’t even need to start panicking for another three or four days.

Viktor checks his watch, which is surprisingly plain—brown leather strap, bright gold casing—and sighs.

“I have to meet with Hagrid about foraging regulations,” he says apologetically. “See you around?”

“Sure,” Yuuri says. “How come your watch works?”

“It’s my dad’s. No electronic parts, see? So there’s no magical field interference.” Viktor laughs. “My parents bought me a wizarding one, too, but I never wear it.”

“Is it ugly?”

“It’s gorgeous, but it doesn’t tell time! Just the phases of the moon and if Mars is in Jupiter’s house or whatever. Completely useless.”

“Do you believe it?” Yuuri asks. “About astrology and Divination and all that.”

“Eh,” Viktor says. “There’s no proof, is there? There are prophecies we know of, but even those don’t always come true. I don’t think there’s any easy way to see the future.” He makes a face. “Besides, the incense they burn in the Divination Tower always makes me break out.”

“That sucks.”

“Mm.” Viktor cocks his head. “Speaking of breaking out, would you like a facial? I have enough chamomile mask for two.”

“Uh…”

“It’s soothing! Since your match is coming up. Think of it as my apology for having to skip our flying lesson.”

“Sure.” Yuuri is willing to try anything to avoid panicking about the match, and is eager to see Viktor more. Their flying lesson had been canceled when Viktor got a “critical letter about funding” from the professor that’s paying for his research. Viktor had sent him a note (tied to Makkachin’s collar) assuring him that it was a banking error, and everything was fine, but it had meant Yuuri had showered and stolen Phichit’s crunchy exfoliating soap for nothing.

“Great! I’ll meet you in the prefect’s bathroom tomorrow afternoon. At three?”

“That’s fine—wait, how do you have the password to the prefect’s bathroom?”

In lieu of answering, Viktor winks. He gives Vicchan one last scratch behind the ears, swallows the last bite of his steak, and claps Yuuri on the shoulder. Then he hefts his bag, which has a number of buttons pinned to it—rainbows and baby animals and Russian phrases Yuuri can’t read—and heads out of the Great Hall.

Yuuri sighs.

“You are sad,” Phichit tells him. “He’s wearing paperclips as earrings.”

“I know.”

“He looks like an anime mascot for Microsoft Word.”

“They should hire him, I’d switch to PC.”

Phichit gasps. “Blasphemy! We made a pact.”

“Relax, Viktor’s a Mac user, too.”

“What’s a Mac?” Erwin, one of Yuuri’s fellow players, asks. Erwin is a Slytherin Chaser, fast and consistent. He was raised in one of England’s all-wizarding neighborhoods in Manchester. He was in Yuuri’s Muggle Studies class two years ago, and thinks that pencils are the pinnacle of Muggle technology. “Is this one of your enterweb things?”

“...yeah,” Yuuri says.

“Enterweb,” Phichit mouths, before launching into an explanation of computers.

Plate empty, Yuuri mutters, “See you in Potions,” and scoops up his dog and his bag to go to class.

 

* * *

 

According to Hagrid, there are no actual laws regarding the foraging of valuable materials from the Forbidden Forest; the dangers within have historically been enough to keep out poachers and criminals. Theoretically. _Didn’t Voldemort kill unicorns in this forest,_ Viktor wonders. _Maybe there should be some rules so every dark lord that comes along can’t stroll in looking for the secret to evil immortality._ He shivers as he picks his way through the trees.

Behind him, Georgi is humming. It sounds like “The Phantom of the Opera” because of course it does. He’s come along with Viktor on this trip into the forest for inspiration; he’s finally gotten tired of writing about Anya.

There’s unicorn hair tangled in the bushes, snagged on the thorns as they pass. Viktor has a long wooden dowel with a hole at the end of it. He ties the strands he picks out of the shrubbery through the hole to secure them, then wraps them around the dowel to keep them from tangling. Unicorn hair is hideously expensive, and incredibly strong. Viktor doesn’t need a lot of it for his project, but he does need spending money. He figures he can sell the excess and make a profit.

 _Maybe Yuuri would like some,_ Viktor thinks. _I could braid him a bracelet. A friendship bracelet. A gay friendship bracelet._

“A boyfriendship bracelet,” he says aloud.

“You could make little heart-shaped charms,” Georgi says bleakly. “Or half-hearts. So you two could match.”

“That’s cute,” Viktor muses. “Maybe for Valentine’s Day.”

They both sigh in unison. He and Georgi love Valentine’s Day. They exchange cards every year, with excerpts from terrible romance novels. Viktor still hasn’t found anything good for next year; he’ll have to hit a secondhand bookstore over the holidays. Chris judges; the one with the worst excerpt gets first pick of Chris’s mountain of Valentine’s day candy.

“What are we looking for?”

“I set up some thaumometers to measure the strength of the school’s magical field at the beginning of the year,” Viktor says. “We’re going to collect the readings for analysis.”

“You can’t do it remotely?”

“I can, but it’s good to make sure the thaumometers are in good condition. Last year I was helping Hagrid with the acromantulas—”

“With the what—”

“Anyway.” Viktor shudders. He hates spiders. “They tried to eat the ones the Ministry placed. I think I did a good job of hiding mine, but you can’t put spells on them, so they need regular maintenance.”

“Acromantulas,” Georgi mutters. “Vitya, I know I’m an artist, but I still want to live to be old.”

“It’s fine, the Ministry says they relocated them.”

“And you believe them?”

As it happens, Viktor does not, and not just because Hagrid has given him several unsubtle warnings about areas to avoid in the forest. “I’ve never seen one.”

Georgi doesn’t say anything else, but after that he follows Viktor so closely he frequently steps on Viktor’s heels.

The forest is dark, and full of ominous rustling. The leaves have begun to fall off the trees, but the starlight doesn’t penetrate the branches well enough to light their way. There’s no moon tonight. Viktor lights the way with his wand, stepping over fallen branches, trying not to disturb the footprints of unicorns and thestrals and wolves that litter the forest floor. He caught Makkachin playing with the wolf pups once, though they fled as soon as they laid eyes on Viktor. _Poor things must be terrified of humans,_ Viktor thinks sadly. _I wanted to play with them, too._

The first thaumometer is mounted about twenty feet up a tree, bound in place with rope and nailed into the bark at great personal cost to Viktor, who had had to wait two days before he had a thumbnail again. Georgi holds Viktor’s bag while Viktor climbs up and adjusts the bindings, his lit wand tucked behind his ear to free up his hands. There’s a little wear from animals pecking and clawing at the casing, but nothing else.

They walk a little more, past a trickling stream.

“The woods are like...a garden,” Georgi says. He’s writing in a notebook that he’s charmed so the pages glow in the dark. “A garden of bone. The woods are like Pluto’s gardens of bone.”

“Mm.”

“No, Persephone! The woods are like Persephone’s gardens of bone, where only dead things grow. Still, even that is better than nothing, and until spring she cannot return to the world above, where green things are sleeping…”

“I like that.”

“It’s a start, at least. My adviser says I need to show range.”

“Make Persephone happily married.”

“And the gardens are a gift from Hades. Hmm.”

The second and third thaumometers are on the ground, wedged into hollows and beneath rocks. Viktor puts on gloves before he pries them out so that he doesn’t ruin his nails. The third one is being partially crushed by the rock, and Viktor cracks the casing getting it out; he swaps out the plastic for a new one from his bag before hiding it again. It takes both his and Georgi’s strength to shove the boulder over a few inches so that it will fit.

“I’m dying,” Georgi wheezes.

“Same,” Viktor says, doubled over. “I should invite Yuuri next time.”

“Do you want him to see you like this?”

“He won’t have to, he could move this on his own.” Viktor once watched Yuuri pick up one of his fellow players—the beefiest one—and hold him over his head. It was amazing.

“We should have brought Chris.”

“I tried, he has the first round of student interviews tonight.”

“Traitor.”

The fourth and fifth thaumometers are both fine, although the fifth one is dangerously close to falling out of the tree it’s in. Viktor spends ten minutes securing it while Georgi stands underneath the tree and uses his wand to give Viktor extra light. He pulls the final knot so hard he nearly throws himself out of the tree.

“Shit!”

“Vitya!”

Viktor escapes the tree with his life, though his hand is bleeding from a thorny vine that’s growing around the tree. He sucks at the wound on his finger as they make their way out of the forest. Georgi navigates this time, using the stars.

“Is your hand alright?”

“I think so.” Viktor frowns. There’s a sound coming from the underbrush. “Did you hear that?”

There’s rustling, and panting, and a soft, animal noise, like a wounded dog.

“Acromantula!”

“Shh!”

“Vitya, no—” Georgi starts to say, but it’s too late. Viktor gets down on his hands and knees, and crawls into the shaking bush. He feels a bit like he’s playing Pokemon; he half-expects a Sudowoodo to swoop down on him. He feels around in the dirt and leaves until he takes hold of something wet and furry.

“Give me some light!”

Georgi points his wand at Viktor from above. There, in his hands, is a wolf cub, the tiniest little wolf cub Viktor has ever seen, its fur stained with blood. It growls piteously at him, baring its teeth. Viktor knows that he should leave it, or bring Hagrid back; a bloody animal will attract predators in the forest. They still have to walk another half hour at least before they’re back on the grounds. Besides, even a baby wolf is a wolf. It’s dangerous.

Viktor considers all of these things at length for the next half hour, but he does it while carrying the tiny wolf in his arms. It’s wrapped in Viktor’s muffler, a bandage from Viktor’s bag hastily charmed over its wound. It weighs so little; it looks so helpless.

It seems to take an age to get out of the forest, and even then, Hagrid’s hut looks like it’s kilometers away. Viktor’s eyelids are heavy, but he can feel the pup’s racing heart against his chest.

“I’ll go wake up Madame Pomfrey,” Georgi says.

“Thanks,” Viktor says. He starts walking towards Hagrid’s hut.

Hagrid wakes up when Viktor pounds on the door, and together they get the pup cleaned up and stitched while they’re waiting for Madame Pomfrey. Madame Pomfrey feeds it a Blood-Replenishing Potion and dabs on some Wound Closing Cream before applying the bandages.

In the candlelight, the wolf pup is light brown, with thick fur and round eyes.

“What on earth savaged the poor thing, I don’t know,” she says fretfully as she siphons the blood from the wolf’s fur.

“Could it be an acromantula?”

“No, the poison would have left signs around the wound. Looks like it was clawed by something large. A hippogriff, maybe, or a thestral.”

“But she’s going to be all right?”

“Fine, although she needs rest before she can be let go. Probably best to have her stay here for a few days.”

Hagrid winces. He’s already had to shut Fang outside because she keeps trying to attack.

“I’ll take her,” Viktor says immediately. “My dog can stay with a friend if they don’t get along.”

“I’ll tell the staff to make sure they send up some raw meat and water for it,” Madame Pomfrey says. “Now, off to bed with you, Mr. Nikiforov. Just because tomorrow is a Saturday doesn’t mean you can forego your rest!”

“Yes, Madame,” Viktor says with a meekness he does not feel. He cradles the wolf to his chest, retrieves his bag and his blood-stained muffler, and flees. Dawn is starting to touch the horizon. The trudge up to the castle is long; the trudge up the stairs to his dorm room, where Georgi has returned and he and Chris are snoring, takes an eternity. Viktor sets the wolf down in a basket that’s appeared next to Makkachin’s dog bed before collapsing onto his bed.

He falls asleep in an instant, and stays that way until late in the afternoon. He doesn’t wake up until four thirty, and forgets about Yuuri and the chamomile masks entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are very much appreciated!


	6. six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri waits two hours in the prefects’ bathroom before he admits to himself that Viktor’s not coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here have MORE Viktor with baby animal content!!!

Yuuri waits two hours in the prefects’ bathroom before he admits to himself that Viktor’s not coming.

It’s a long two hours, and Yuuri spends it vacillating between trying to figure out if he should take off some of his clothes or wear a swimsuit or something, if they need towels, if he can get away with locking the bathroom door while he and Viktor are in there...and wondering what the fuck he’s done that Viktor hasn’t shown. _Maybe,_ Yuuri thinks, _he was in a freak accident on the way here. Maybe he got another letter about funding. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he just doesn’t care. Maybe I fucked up yesterday and he is mad at me and we’re never going to speak again._

Finally, after the two hours have passed, he gives up. He has practice tonight, and he has homework to do, and he’s too tired and anxious to wait anymore. Poor Vicchan, who Yuuri gave a bath just to have something to do with his hands, must be able to sense his emotional turmoil. The poodle climbs into his arms and refuses to be put down.

“So I think he hates me,” Yuuri tells fellow Slytherin player Seung-gil Lee. He spits out a mouthful of blood into the grass; this is the third time today he’s slammed into something while trying to catch the Snitch. Anxiety is hell on his reflexes.

Seung-gil raises one eyebrow.

“I mean, he said he would come. It was his idea. And he didn’t! So it’s clearly all my fault.”

Seung-gil raises both eyebrows.

“What other reason could there be? He’s probably practicing kissing with the other seventh years in the back of the library right now.”

“You’re bleeding everywhere.”

Yuuri glances down at his blood-stained robes and touches his swollen nose gingerly. There’s a spell to reduce swelling and stop the bleeding; Yuuri can do it without problems on other people, but the last time he tried it on himself, he gave himself an elephant trunk.

“It’s fine, the robes are a dark color.”

“There’s blood on the stands,” Seung-gil points out. Yuuri winces. There is, in fact, a smear of blood on the stands where Yuuri flew into them. “People sit there. It’s unsanitary.”

“I’ll go clean it up,” Yuuri promises. “How bad is my face?”

“Your nose looks like a potato.”

“Great. Look, get back up there, I want to run through this drill again. Yuri said the Gryffindors are really pushing the hawkshead formation in practice, I want us to be able to get around it.”

Seung-gil nods. He’s a fifth year who’s admitted his goal is to take Yuuri’s place when Yuuri graduates, so Yuuri relies on him for assistance. Seung-gil never shows any emotion except mild annoyance, and he doesn’t look too scary, but he’s one of the most aggressive Beaters Yuuri’s ever met. _He would make a good captain,_ Yuuri thinks, _a better captain than me._

He gets through the rest of practice without injuring himself (though he does accidentally knock a Bludger into one of his teammates when he flies into it too hard). The bleeding has stopped by the time Yuuri lands. There’s dried blood all over his face and clothes, but that’s fine. Maybe it will make him look tougher.

“The match is in less than two weeks,” Yuuri says. “Thirteen days. The Gryffindors already ordered their banners for their victory party.” He wipes at his face with his sleeve, but since the sleeve is bloody, all he does is move the mess around. “Let’s make sure they _wasted_ their money.”

The team cheers in unison. Despite himself, Yuuri grins.

(Yuuri hopes no one has ordered victory banners for their party. Or if they have, he hopes no one tells him about it.)

After they put up their brooms in the shed, Yuuri gets a few of his teammates to agree to assist with his project by providing their brooms for comparison.

“We could have a race!” Minami, another Mahoutokoro student displaced by the reconstruction, pipes up excitedly. He’s practically swimming in his quidditch robes. Yuuri makes a mental notes to have them shrunk before the match. “You could test your broom against our brooms!”

“Uh,” Yuuri says, unsure if he wants to subject himself to this particular brand of public humiliation.

“Ugh, like anyone wants to spend more time watching you fall out of the sky,” Yuri says. “Piggy.”

“Katsuki-senpai wouldn’t fall out of the sky!”

“He went facefirst into the grass three times today!”

“Guys,” Yuuri says.

“If you’re so good, Plisetsky, why don’t you race Katsuki-senpai?”

“Maybe I will!”

 _“Guys,”_ Yuuri says again.

“If you do a race, you can use that as your presentation. No talking,” Seung gil points out.

Yuuri blinks. _No public speaking,_ he thinks. _I’d just have to fly. So what if I crash into the ground? Maybe if I break my arm again my professors will give me an O out of pity._

“Why don’t both of you race me?” Yuuri asks. More will be better. It’ll mean fewer eyes on him. “It’ll be, uh, more theatrical.”

“Really? I would be so honored! I’ll practice every day! I won’t disappoint you!”

“I’ll destroy you so completely you’ll never ride a broom again!”

“I appreciate your support. I think.”

One of Yuuri’s teammates takes pity on him and siphons the dried blood off of him before they go their separate ways. Long after they’ve gone up to the castle to steal a snack from the kitchens and take long showers, Yuuri lingers on the pitch, jogging around with his freezing hands shoved in his armpits. When he finally drags himself down to the dungeons, he stops outside the Ravenclaw Tower’s door. He thinks about knocking, but the idea that he might get into the Tower and still be turned away is too much. He showers until his skin is pink, crawls into bed with Vicchan, and sleeps.

Viktor doesn’t go to any of his classes the next day.

Viktor doesn’t go to any of his classes for the next week. He doesn’t eat a single meal in the Great Hall, even though Yuuri determinedly brings Vicchan and a bag with several unnecessary books every day so he can save him a space. He doesn’t appear on the grounds with his equipment, or play with Makkachin by the lake, or anywhere besides in Yuuri’s dreams.

Yuuri breaks one evening and actually does go into Ravenclaw Tower, after giving the knocker on the door a stumbling answer to the riddle, but neither Viktor nor his two roommates are there. The note he leaves stuck to Viktor’s door goes unanswered.

It’s clear that Viktor doesn’t want to see him.

So Yuuri does what he always does. He throws himself into quidditch. He runs more laps, Vicchan trotting at his heels. He works out twice as hard. He flies before practice and after practice, chasing the Snitch up and down the pitch until his eyes cross with exhaustion. By the time he’s back in his bed every evening, he’s too tired to worry about anything. The match is coming up, and if Yuuri has fucked up his friendship with Viktor, he can’t afford to fuck up this, too.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri isn’t talking to him.

First Makkachan (as Viktor dubs the wolf pup) gets sicks. Then, because wizard diseases are garbage, Makkachin gets sick. And finally, because he’s the one nursing them, he gets sick. It takes a week before he can take both canines to Hagrid for the day and venture out of his dorm room.

Viktor almost enjoys Arithomancy that day. But only almost, because Arithomancy is a bullshit subject with no objective evidence to back it up, and Viktor will never stop demanding Hogwarts teach its students some actual adult math. After that he goes for a walk, making notes of important magical sites on the grounds, before going in for lunch.

He goes over to take his usual seat by Yuuri, but it’s taken. So Viktor sits across the table from him.

“Hi, Yuuri!”

Yuuri looks up. His face turns red. His mouth opens. Closes.

Then he looks down hurriedly and starts eating furiously. Viktor blinks, confused—is he just really hungry—and tries again. Viktor looks awful, its true, with hairline acne and boring earrings (just studs that change color randomly), and his manicure is chipped, but he’s been in bed for days, what can he do?

“It’s good to see you!”

Yuuri’s eyes remain fixed firmly on his plate. He’s eating rice and egg just like he always does. Vicchan, sitting on the table by his plate with a saucer of bacon, barks and tries to clamber over the dishes to Viktor. Yuuri catches him by the collar and gently tugs him back.

“Yuuri?”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” the Hufflepuff girl sitting next to Yuuri says. “Can’t you tell?”

“Stay out of it,” Viktor snaps.

She snorts. “I thought Ravenclaws were supposed to be smart.”

Viktor swallows down a sharp retort and turns away from her. Let her say what she wants. It’s Yuuri that matters here.

“Yuuri?”

Yuuri doesn’t respond, though his expression twists like he’s in pain. He shovels the rest of his rice into his mouth in enormous bites; his chopsticks clatter on the table as he snatches up his dog and his bag.

“Yuuri, wait!” Viktor gets up, intent on following. All thoughts of his growling stomach and full plate are forgotten. “Wait a minute! At least tell me why you’re mad!”

The Hufflepuff seizes his arm. “Leave him alone!”

“Keep your gigantic nose out of it!”

Viktor knows it’s uncalled for as soon as the words are out of his mouth, but he can’t take them back, and he wouldn’t even if he could. He wrenches his arm out of her grip and bends down to get his bag. Yuuri has Potions next; it’s at least a ten minute walk, Viktor can still catch him if he hurries.

Something cold and wet splashes all over his head.

Snape-Nosed Hufflepuff has just dumped her glass of pumpkin juice all over his head. It drips down his face, onto his shoulders, into his clean robes and in fat droplets onto the floor. Viktor blink it out of his eyes. It stings.

He stares at her, remembering his parents’ advice: _Ignore them. And tell a teacher if you need help._

A quick cleaning charm gets all the juice out of his hair.

 _I’m walking away,_ Viktor thinks, and he shoulders his bag and starts out of the Great Hall.

“Finally,” Pinocchio Nose says loudly. “Maybe now he’ll go sit with the other freaks.”

Viktor very calmly draws his wand and turns all her textbooks into swarms of cockroaches. They start pouring out of her bag and onto her shoes in a flood of shiny brown exoskeleton. Several people nearby scream. The professors sitting at the staff table are coming over.

“Mr. Nikiforov!”

Viktor flees.

 

* * *

 

The good news is that after that awful, awkward lunch, Viktor leaves him alone.

The bad news is that Yuuri misses him terribly.

The worst reason is that Viktor couldn’t talk to him even if he wanted to. He’s in detention, tutoring younger students in Transfiguration. Yuuri gets the story in bits and pieces from other students: there was a fight. Over Yuuri.

Apparently the Hufflepuff girl who’s been sitting with him at lunch and dinner, and who can’t ever remember the Hogsmeade weekend dates (she keeps asking him about them) poured pumpkin juice all over Viktor, and Viktor retaliated by turning everything in her bookbag into cockroaches.

Half of them had been smashed, and it took three professors and several students to corral all the bugs and to scrape up the remains to be Transfigured back. The Transfiguration professor, Leone, had made a teaching exercise by offering his students extra credit if they could undo the spell.

It had taken six hours.

So that’s cool, that Viktor is so good at Transfiguration that he can just permanently turn things into bugs. Very cool. Yuuri hopes Viktor isn’t mad at him about the fight. _I wasn’t even there,_ Yuuri thinks as he trudges across the grounds, collecting twigs for his broomstick’s tail. _I didn’t do anything! I didn’t tell her to pour juice on him! Does he know I’m scared of bugs?_

The remaining week leading up to the match is a fucking disaster.

When Yuuri’s on the field, and supposed to be thinking about playing well, he thinks about Viktor. When Yuuri’s in class, he’s thinking about how shitty his flying is. When he’s supposed be doing homework, he’s thinking about how he’s going to fail if he doesn’t pay attention in class. Madam Pomfrey gives him an entire bottle of Coagulant Potion and a large tin of Bruise Balm all for himself, after she sees him in the hospital wing twice in a day. A professor asks him to demonstrate a wordless Burning Charm and Yuuri freezes another classmate’s hair. His essay turns into nervous rambling: _Viktor was my friend and I’m mad at him because I thought he blew me off but actually he did try to talk to me so maybe he’s sorry and I should have listened to him and I didn’t and now he’s probably mad and I’m going to cost my team the match and then they’ll ask Viktor to turn me into a spider and they’ll all take turns stepping on me, just like I deserve._

The night before the match, Yuuri breaks. After practice is over, he hides in one of the locker room showers by crouching on the seat inside it until everyone leaves. Then he gets dressed again and breaks into the broom shed.

He’ll just do a couple laps around the field. If he’s tired, he might actually sleep before the match.

Yuuri loves the pitch at night. He loves flying under the stars, which seem so much closer when he’s in the air; he loves the way the moonlight strips everything of color; he loves the thrill of diving straight down and not being able to judge the distance with his eyes, of pulling out of the feint on intuition alone.

He’s not a naturally talented flier, the way Yuri is. Yuuri had to crash hundreds of times before he learned. That’s all he’s got going for him: he’s not scared to beat himself up to get the win. Sure, it might be crazy to bodycheck Bludgers, but hey, someone has to.

Flying in lazy, crooked circles, Yuuri goes faster and faster. The wind whips through his hair; his eyes water. If feels almost like he could outrun his own—

“Yuuri!”

Only a lifetime of experience keeps Yuuri from falling off his broom in surprise. Viktor is standing in the center of the pitch, something in his arms; Yuuri only knows it is him because of the way the moonlight gleams on his silvery hair.

 _Fly away,_ Yuuri thinks, but he remembers how he spent ten minutes in Muggle Studies thinking about how he’d tell Viktor about that one Slytherin prefect insisting quills were objectively superior to pens, and sighs. He flies back down instead and dismounts.

“…hi.”

“Hi.”

“It’s late.”

“I had detention and it ran over.” Viktor runs a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, I heard about your…your thing. With the bugs. That no one could undo.”

“It was only the Kazinsky variation.”

“Right.” Yuuri sort of remembers what that is from one of his trips to the Bangkok library. It’s some of spell modifying technique devised by magical theorists. Maybe.

“I noticed you weren’t talking to me.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you mad at me?” Viktor asks. Up close, his eyes are wide. His earrings are glowing blue crystals. In his arms is a large picnic basket. “Why? What did I do?”

“We were supposed to do facials together,” Yuuri mumbles. He feels incredibly stupid now, in the face of Viktor’s soft, confused expression. “Remember?”

“I—I completely forgot,” Viktor admits. “I found a baby wolf in the woods—”

“A baby wolf?”

Viktor flips up the lid of the basket to reveal a fluffy brown wolf pup. It’s adorable; Yuuri very nearly reaches into the basket to pet it.

“Her name’s Makkachan.”

“Oh.”

“I combined our dog’s names.”

“Oh.”

“I had to take care of her for a while, so Madam Pomfrey excuse me from class. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Yuuri should feel stupider—there was a perfectly good explanation and he was mad for nothing—but Viktor holds out the basket, and all the anger and shame melts away. The smile on Viktor’s face when the wolf pup sticks her tiny snout out of the basket to look around is too cute. Of course Viktor dropped everything for a baby animal. He’s that kind of person.

Viktor pets the wolf pup. It licks him.

“Do you want to walk down with me to the Forest?” Viktor asks. “I have to take her back to the pack.”

Only the combination of his crush and a cute baby animal can explain the temporary insanity that overtakes him then.

“It’ll be faster if we fly,” he says. “You want a ride?”

“On your broom?”

“Yeah.” Yuuri swallows. “It’s, uh. It’s really safe. You can hang onto me.”  
  
“Okay.”

Viktor does something to the basket with his wand to adhere it to the broom. (Yuuri doesn’t even like doing magic on his broom in case he fucks it up. Viktor’s the first person who isn’t a Ho-o certified broom maintainer to ever touch it.) Yuuri mounts behind it. Viktor approaches gingerly as he slides his leg over the handle. He puts his arms around Yuuri’s waist; his chin rests on Yuuri’s shoulder, his fuzzy scarf tickles Yuuri’s neck. Viktor smells like mint.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.” Viktor’s breath touches Yuuri’s ear. He shivers.

They take off. Yuuri keeps the broom slow and steady, rising up off the ground in a long arc towards the moon. Even in the cold air, he feels warm all over, Viktor clinging to him tightly.

“Don’t be scared,” Yuuri whispers. “I won’t let you fall.”

“I’m not scared,” Viktor whispers back, as they drift through the night sky, away from the world. “I know you won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are much appreciated!


	7. seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u seri for betaing, also for being great

The morning of the match dawns sunny and warm, which does nothing to improve Yuuri's mood; at least rain would have given him an excuse to suck. He lies awake, face hidden in the pillow, wondering if it's too late to quit quidditch and start playing gobstones instead.

_On one hand,_ Yuuri thinks, _if I fuck up today my career is over. On the other hand if I don't fuck up, I have to do it two more times._

It takes three full minutes of pillow screaming before he can make himself get up and dressed.

The rest of his team is waiting for him in the common room. Minami even has toast, which he presents to Yuuri like it's the Order of Merlin. Only the knowledge that vomiting will demoralize the team gets him through the nauseating experience of eating it. Yuuri nods at them in lieu of speaking.

"The Gryffindors are singing," Minami explains.

"...Theme of King JJ?"

Seung-gil nods.

The desire to wretch increases. Yuuri brushes his robes down. He leads the team out of the common room and down to the pitch. There are a few people in the stands, but not many. Most people are still at breakfast.

Also, Viktor is there. He's standing outside the locker room. He's wearing a forest green sweater and his hair has a metallic sheen and—

"Is that a snake on your head?"

"I named her Yuuchan!"

"Uh."

The snake is wound around Viktor's head like a crown. It hisses. Yuuri is not sure that wearing a snake on your head is allowed, but is he going to tell Viktor this? No.

"Oh, and I brought you some chamomile tea. It's soothing." Viktor thrusts a mug at him.

Yuuri drinks from it blindly.

"Are you relaxed?"

"Vitya, this is disgusting." Yuuri still drinks the entire thing, though. It can't hurt. "Are you going to watch the match?"

"Of course! I'm going to watch you very closely. I'm studying you so I can learn about quidditch."

"Right..."

Why does Viktor need to learn about quidditch? Why does he think Yuuri is a good test subject? That is a lot of unnecessary pressure on Yuuri’s shoulders.

"Katsuki-kun, we have to go," Minami whispers. "A scout from Japan wants to meet you!"

The world tilts for a moment as he panics. He has to close his eyes. _Talk about unnecessary pressure,_ he thinks, as he hangs on to his broom like he’s flying through a hurricane. A scout from Japan? There’s only two Japanese students here at Hogwarts: himself, and Minami, who has a British mother. He shudders. Maybe they’re here for Minami.

(Yuuri wants to play for Japan so badly. He wants to bring a World Cup Trophy home to his parents. He wants a set of Team Japan robes. He wants to fly over the pitch like a bullet.)

“There’s scouts from all over here today,” Minami continues. “Even someone from Canada is here to watch JJ play!”

He follows the rest of the team down to the center of the pitch. The Gryffindors are filing in on the other side; Madam Ronan is between them, whistle held in her mouth. Rumors say she got that whistle from Madam Hooch when she retired. Georgi once claimed she broke into Madam Hooch’s tomb and took it out of the corpse’s mouth.

The stands are filling in, too. Yuuri takes off his glasses and casts a charm on his face to temporary give him normal vision. Then he does a water-repelling charm, for good measure. He glances around: there are the Slytherins, out in full force, a solid block of green, and there are the Gryffindors in red and gold, and there is the rest of the school, mostly dressed casually. There are more people than Yuuri expected (hoped for). But then again, the Slytherin/Gryffindor rivalry is legendary.

“I want a nice, clean game,” Madam Ronan says. There are posters of Madam Ronan from her pro days where she’s nursing a broken elbow from fouling other players too hard. “Ready? On my mark. One...two...three...GO!”

Yuuri kicks off, so hard that he overshoots and ends up above the other two Chasers. The Beaters take their positions; Minami swoops off in search of the Snitch; Madam Ronan bends down, arms raised, and throws the quaffle into the air. Yuuri dives for it—misses—and Gryffindor takes possession.

From the stands, there’s singing. It’s fucking Theme of King JJ, which JJ is conducting from his place in from of the goal hoops on his side of the pitch.

_It’d be nice if JJ was sucked,_ Yuuri think as he intercepts, snatching the quaffle midair and hurling it at the center hoop. JJ blocks it with ease as the crowd roars. But no, JJ is already tapped to play for Canada, and will as soon as he’s of age. Probably the only chance Canada has of ever winning a World Cup. Rumors say that JJ tried out as a chaser, then as a beater, and then as a seeker, and sucked at all three. Finally the captain let him fill in for keeper, since no one else had tried out for that position—and he was great at it.

Yuuri is a chaser because Minako was a chaser. There’s no grand story about that.

The Gryffindors pass the quaffle between each other, and Yuuri waits until the last second to intercept so that their beater has no chance to drive him off. He rolls to avoid a bludger, ball in his hands, hanging onto the broom with his thighs.

Someone cheers for him, loudly. Yuuri’s pretty sure it’s Viktor.

_Stop thinking,_ he thinks. _Play._

Getting past JJ is a lot of work, so the Slytherins have adopted a different strategy: keep the quaffle in possession as much as possible. The Gryffindors can’t score if they don’t have the ball, and that will keep them on the Slytherin side of the pitch—which should eventually give the Slytherin team a chance to score.

Yuuri passes to Erwin, who passes to Rani, who loses the quaffle to Gryffindor. Seung-gil slams the nearest bludger in their direction and the quaffle slips. Yuuri lunges, so fast his eyes water, and intercepts. He passes to Rani, who passes to Erwin, who passes it back to Rani, who ducks a Gryffindor flying right at her to pass backwards to Yuuri.

The match goes on like that, all three of them in a zen state where only passing matters, until the game is half over and one of the Gryffindors finally gets frustrated and elbows Rani in the face. Rani, while tough, does not have Yuuri’s experience with getting her nose broken. She drops the quaffle just as Madam Ronan blows her whistle.

“We’re halfway through and it’s 0-0,” Rani complains as Madam Ronan fixes her nose. “Minami, you need to catch the snitch before Gryffindor does.”

“I’m trying,” Minami protests. “It keeps flying between you guys!”

“Okay,” Yuuri says, thinking. If Minami goes for the snitch while it’s flying around, all that’s going to happen is him being nailed by all three Gryffindor chasers at once. “Minami, when you see the snitch, I want you to signal me. Yell the name of a fruit.”

“What?”

“When that happens, we’ll all fly towards the Gryffindor’s side of the pitch like we’re trying to score. We’ll use that hawkshead formation that JJ likes. They’ll try to stop us, and Minami can go for the snitch.”

“Is that allowed?” Minami asks.

“Minami, this game has balls that fly around hitting people,” Guang-hong, the other beater, says. “Of course it’s allowed.”

“Well, okay. As soon as I have a clear shot, I’ll go for it.”

“Seung gil, I want you to block their seeker as much as possible.”

“Fine.”

Yuuri nods as Madam Ronan gestures for them to get back on their brooms. She tosses him the quaffle.

“If we lose, they’ll play ‘Theme of King JJ’ all night,” Erwin grumbles.

“Let’s not lose,” Yuuri says. He definitely doesn’t want to lose in front of Viktor. Or the scout from Japan. Or Viktor.

They kick off again. The Gryffindors spread out, watching them warily as Erwin takes the penalty shot. JJ blocks it easily. There’s a brief scuffle as Rani fights a Gryffindor chaser for the quaffle—she takes it and passes to Yuuri who passes back to Rani who passes to Erwin—and it begins again. This time the Gryffindors are more aggressive than ever; each of them attaches themselves to one of the Slytherin chasers, hoping to intercept the ball.

Yuuri’s arms are burning from the effort of throwing longer and longer passes. Where the hell is the snitch? He has to dive for the quaffle and misses—the Gryffindors try to score—miss—and Rani has possession again. They’re all getting tired, and the Gryffindors are getting better and better at intercepting. Yuuri should have known his strategy was too defensive. _Idiot,_ he thinks as he catches the quaffle by the tips of his fingers and shoots upward to avoid a bludger. _You’re going to make the entire team lose!_

“Pineapple!”

For an instant, everyone stops.

Then Yuuri turns his broom around and accelerates towards JJ like his life depends on it.

Rani and Erwin flank him. Seung-gil and Guang-hong desperately bat the bludgers away from them. The crowd starts singing ‘Theme of King JJ’ again.

Yuuri gauges the distance between JJ and the hoops. He gets ready to take aim, knowing that if he telegraphs it even a little bit JJ will block it—he lifts the quaffle—

Someone screams behind him.

The crowd roars. JJ’s mouth drops open. Yuuri takes the chance. The quaffle sails cleanly though the hoop.

A wave of green spreads through the bleachers as everyone in Slytherin colors stands up and cheers. Yuuri watches, bewildered, as Viktor waves frantically in his direction. The rest of the players slap him on the back and hold up their palms for high fives.

“…did we win?”

“Yeah.” Seung-gil nods at him. “Guess the Gryffindors will need new banners after all.”

Yuuri feels the smile spread across his face, until his cheeks hurt. Nothing could make this moment better, except maybe the scout from Japan appearing to sign him for Japan that very instant.

A few minutes later, Yuuri is tackled by Viktor as he gets off his broom. Viktor smells like chamomile. The snake in his hair licks Yuuri’s ear. He revises his previous and clearly wrong opinion: _now_ things can’t get any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment my family (okay it's just me) are starving


	8. eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear i'll update one of the neglected WIPs soon (weeps @ telepath viktor au) but for now please accept this 3000 words of gay

Viktor is beginning to suspect that Yuuri does not actually _need_ Muggle Studies tutoring.

One, Yuuri’s Muggle Studies grades are fine. Two, Yuuri does not seem at all concerned that their weekly tutoring session rarely involves any discussion of Muggle Studies. Three, Viktor waited outside Dr. Munich’s office yesterday for half an hour to catch Yuuri after Muggle Studies and he seemed fine.

Viktor has decided not to say anything about it to Yuuri, though. Either Yuuri is unreasonably nervous about Muggle Studies and a little extra help will reassure him, or he’s pretending to need tutoring to hang out with Viktor. Both of those are fine with Viktor. The library already has tens of thousands of rare books and squishy chairs; the addition of Yuuri, reading intensely, is perfection. _He is so hot when he reads,_ Viktor thinks as Yuuri licks his finger to turn the page. _I want to_ be _that book._

“What does ‘differential absorption of aviational magic in organic and non-organic materials is highly influenced by the Lewis and Drakov principles’ mean?”

“Hmm?” Viktor blinks. “The Lewis and Drakov principles? It’s a theory of integrational magic.”

“Okay.” Yuuri nods. “What is ‘integrational magic’?”

“It’s a field of study that integrates muggle science with magical theory. Lewis and Drakov theorized that the molecular structure of materials influenced the way magic acted on them.”

Yuuri peers at his book again. “So they’re talking about which woods are best for brooms…” He starts scribbling in his notebook.

Viktor turns back to his map. So far, he’s been able to construct a preliminary map of several sections of the grounds and forest, and he’s now trying to construct a model of the magical field. They don’t have to start producing concrete work for their capstones until after the winter holiday, but Viktor’s capstone is being funded by a magical theorist in Bulgaria, so it requires constant attention. Not that he minds.

“Do you have any books about wandlore?”

“Aisle seven, section three.” Viktor read a lot about wandlore when he was younger, as part of his interest in spell linguistics. Ultimately his interest had moved elsewhere. “What’s your wand, Yuuri?”

“Willow and phoenix,” Yuuri replies. “Why?”

“I should have known you would have a willow wand, Yuuri.”

“Really?”

“It’s supposed to be a wood of great potential. Very good for advanced magic.”

“I was scared I’d end up with a hazel and unicorn or something,” Yuuri says. “Yours is walnut and dragon, right?”

“How did you know?” Viktor asks eagerly. He’s never mentioned it to Yuuri, mostly because walnut wands are traditionally associated with genius and Viktor didn’t want Yuuri to think he was showing off.

“I asked Yurio,” Yuuri admits. “I couldn’t tell what it was by looking. Walnut’s rare, isn’t it?”

“It’s usually paired with unicorn. The stronger cores can make the wand unstable.”

Yuuri wanders off in search of his book, while Viktor sighs over his half-constructed three-dimensional model, made of bits of light and pipe cleaners. _He looked up my wand wood._ He adjusts his hair and his earrings—the earrings are convertible, so he flips them—and dabs on more lip gloss. Then he starts tying pipe cleaners again.

Several books land on the table with a thump.

“Hey, weren’t your earrings fish before?” Yuuri asks. “Now they’re pineapples. That’s cute.”

“They taste like pineapple, too,” Viktor says. “Like hard candy. In case I get hungry in class—here—” He lifts his hair out of the way. Yuuri stares at him, possibly dumbfounded by the utility. It’s true. Hogwarts may have banned eating in class, but they haven’t banned edible jewelry. It’s an acceptable use of transfiguration. This is why Viktor is top in his class.

Viktor’s intention is to take one off and hand it to him, but Yuuri comes around the table, and in the single gayest moment of Viktor’s short life, opens his mouth and lets Viktor put the pineapple in it. Yuuri’s breath touches his mouth. Viktor hears the telltale crunch as the contact with saliva turns the earring into pineapple-flavored candy.

“This is really sour,” Yuuri says. He looks like he’s swallowed a lemon. Viktor wonders if he messed up this batch. Maybe he was a little hard on the acidity spells? Maybe he overdid the fusion of pineapple and lemon flavoring?

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Yuuri says. He does not sound fine. He swallows loudly. “I’m great. Are those amplifications?” He points to Viktor’s model, where he’s mapped the unicorn tracks and other magical creature’s lairs and haunts against the measurable magical field. “From the unicorns?”

“That’s right!” Viktor beams. “There’s a definite correlation between the areas magical creatures roam and the strength of the magical field.”

“That seems kind of obvious.”

“It is kind of obvious. Magical theorists have known that for centuries.”

“Right, because we use magical creatures as ingredients and in our wands, so they have to emit magic.”

“We know that it happens, but not why it happens. That’s why I’m collecting this data fresh, instead of using what already exists.”

“But you’re safe, right? Are you allowed in the forest by yourself?”

“Yes.” Viktor is not strictly sure he’s allowed, but no one’s said he couldn’t. This is what his mother would call semantics and Yakov would call being a fucking idiot. “But I would do it even if I wasn’t allowed.”

“Why?”

“Because every other field of science is being studied. Biology and chemistry and physics have thousands of scientists trying to understand them. The magical world is so far behind.” Viktor taps the table with his wand, sending up a shower of sparks. “What’s the point in memorizing The Standard Book of Spells, volumes one through seven, and then just giving on learning for the rest of your life?”

“Why do British wizards even _have_ books of standard spells?” Yuuri asks. “We don’t do that in Japan.”

“Wait, you don’t?”

“Yeah? We have to have _a_ book of spells, but there are lots of different ones. You can make up your own incantations. Some of the advanced classes just have you use a regular word so you can learn to cast…” Yuuri screws up his face. “…uh, in English…with intent.”

“In Russia there’s a big focus on variations and spell modifications,” Viktor says. “We don’t spend whole classes on individual spells. That part they expect you to do on your own.”

“Did you like it there better?”

“It was a better education, I think, but they let me have their curriculum guide. Besides, there are lots of good things about Hogwarts. There are unicorns, and there’s quidditch, and there’s you.”

“…you don’t even like quidditch.” Yuuri is staring very determinedly at his book again.

“I’m coming around on it.” Viktor is personally in favor of any activity that involves all his good-looking, muscly classmates flying around for his ogling pleasure. The view during some of Yuuri’s practices is astounding. “When are you going to teach me how to fly?”

“Tonight?”

“The Halloween feast is tonight.” And apparently attendance is mandatory. Or at least it was last year when Viktor tried to sneak out.

Halloween is the most important holiday for British wizards. Viktor’s not really sure why. Is it because of witches and broomsticks? That seems specious. British wizards don’t understand how to celebrate, either. The Halloween Feast is just the same food they eat everyday but dyed orange and with pumpkin added to everything. No candy. No food that looks like it’s made of rotting flesh. No costumes. And no excuses to kiss anyone, unlike Viktor’s top three holidays: Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve, and his birthday.

Yuuri makes a face. “I hate pumpkin.”

“I hate British Halloween music.”

“They need to stop rhyming things with pumpkin.”

“It’s dreadful. You should have heard Georgi complain.”

“If we leave right now,” Yuuri says, eyes narrowing, “we can get out _before_ people start coming down for the feast.”

Viktor shrinks his model down so enthusiastically that it ends up the size of his thumbnail. He has to blow it back up before he can safely put it in the enchanted matchbox he uses to store it.

“Let’s go!”

They slip out of the library to the front doors, which are locked but not barred. Viktor opens them with a flick of his wand and tugs Yuuri by the hand into the cool fall evening. The breeze is nice, compared to the stuffiness of the Great Hall, with its thousands of burning candles and steaming hot food. Really, muggles have air conditioning, wizards need to get on this.

“Let’s head down to the pitch, it’ll be empty this time of night.”

Inwardly, Viktor is giddy. Flying lessons with Yuuri! Viktor’s had the basics, but he’s never been good at it, never tried to get better at it, and frankly doesn’t actually care about flying. But Yuuri cares about flying, a lot. Learning to fly with Yuuri will let Viktor get closer to him emotionally. Mentally. Physically.

Yuuri unlocks the broom shed and retrieves one of the school’s brooms and his own. He holds out his broom to Viktor.

“Here?”

“Are you sure? This is expensive, isn’t it?”

“It’s okay.”

“Yeah?”

“The school brooms are a lot more temperamental. This way, if you make a mistake, you won’t accidentally slam into the stands.”

“Like you do?” Viktor teases. Yuuri’s protective instinct is cute, even if it’s totally misplaced. Viktor’s had so many lab-related close calls Yakov had to write up a separate set of rules for him.

Yuuri rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “I, uh…yeah.” He puts the broom in Viktor’s hands. “Do you know how to mount?”

“No.” Viktor draws his wand and hurriedly casts an anti-gravity charm on himself, using the Simon variation to make it height-activated. And he downs a mouthful of plum tea from the flask in his coat pocket. Just in case.

“Are you drinking?”

“It’s dirigible plum tea. Dad says it’s good for concentration.” Viktor offers him the flask. “Do you want some?”

“No. No, I drank a lot of pumpkin juice.”

“You hate pumpkin juice. We didn’t even go to the feast.”

“Let’s get on our brooms!” Yuuri grabs the free end of the broom handle and holds it steady for Viktor to mount.

Viktor straddles the broom, which is harder than he thinks; there are cushioning charms, but since they’re invisible, Viktor’s not really sure if he’s in position or not. The seat is poking him in a weird place and he doesn’t like it. He wraps his hands gingerly around the handle in front of him. The broom wobbles dangerously.

“No, not like that.” Yuuri grabs Viktor’s thigh. His thigh. With his large and strong hands. He adjusts Viktor’s position and also confirms that all Viktor’s vague fantasies about being carried by his buff future husband are one hundred percent accurate. Then he puts his hands on Viktor’s back and pushes him forward a little, before covering Viktor’s hands with his own to fix his grip on the broom. “Is that comfortable?”

It definitely isn’t, but Yuuri’s face is very close and Viktor is very gay. “Yeah.”

“Great. You pull up to climb, push down to dive. Push right and left to turn, use your legs to help. Lean forward to accelerate, lean back to brake.” Yuuri steps back and mounts the old school broom. He pulls up and rises smoothly, five or six meters up. “Try it.”

Viktor pulls up on his broom handle. It rises at the slightest touch, and he shoots up, far above Yuuri’s head. Surprised, Viktor forgets entirely how to stop, and lets go of the handle. This is a mistake. The broom stops, instantly. Viktor does not stop.

“Fuck!” Yuuri yelps as he zooms upward. The broom stops immediately at the sound of Yuuri’s voice.

Viktor is floating midair, thanks to his anti-gravity spell, so he has plenty of time to glare at the stupid broom. _If that’s not considered temperamental, I’d hate to see what the school brooms are like._

“Are you okay?” Yuuri helps Viktor onto his broom in front of him. He looks very worried.

Viktor is, in fact, fine. But he’s not stupid. He clings to Yuuri tightly anyways.

“That went terribly,” he says. “What did I do wrong?”

“No idea. Hang on.” Yuuri whistles. His broom comes. “It’s a Phoenix 2020, it shouldn’t act like that…do you want to try again?”

“Sure.”

With Yuuri’s help, Viktor remounts, this time hanging onto the handle much more firmly. Yuuri hovers beside him; he can control his broom without using his hands. He covers Viktor’s hands on the handle with his own.

“Okay,” Yuuri says. “We’re gonna go right. Just…” he guides Viktor’s hands. “…like that. I like your nails.”

Viktor’s nails are pink and blue, purely in defense against the tsunami of orange and black all around him during October. Black is all right on occasion, Viktor can pull it off as long as he’s not wearing one of the dreadful robes British wizards wear, but but orange? Orange is the worst color. It makes Viktor look dead.

“Thank you, Yuuri.” Unfortunately, when Yuuri withdraws his hands, Viktor’s hands are cold and he has to try it himself. “So…like this…?”

The broom jumps—but not right. It jumps left, in Yuuri’s direction, instead.

“Wait, no, the other way—”

Viktor tries again to pull the broom right. It rolls over—Viktor’s head smacks painfully against Yuuri’s arm—until he’s hanging upside down. _My hair is going to be ruined,_ Viktor thinks as he falls off his broom. Hie earrings, long strings of tiny enameled maple leaves, are getting all tangled up in his ponytail. At least he’s wearing nice jeans. The anti-gravity charm keeps him from falling too far, at least.

“Yuuri, I don’t think your broom likes me.”

“I’m sorry! It’s supposed to be the best on the market, the Ho-o rep told me they’re designed to anticipate the rider’s every move.”

“Oh.” Is the broom picking up on Viktor’s desire to be near Yuuri or Yuuri’s desire to have Viktor near him? Further experimentation will be necessary. “Can you help me get down?”

“Right!”

The broom does not want to descend, so Viktor ends up on the back of Yuuri’s broom. The abandoned broom follows Yuuri back down to the pitch without so much as a twitch out of line. Once they’re back on the pitch, and Viktor’s undone the anti-gravity charm, Yuuri sighs.

“We can try with the brooms switched?” Yuuri offers. “Or I can borrow a broom from someone else next time, it’s getting kind of late.” He prods the handle of his own. “Maybe I should take it to the Ho-o guy again.”

“Maybe next week? You’re right, it is late. Makka will be wondering where I am.”

Yuuri takes both brooms back to the shed, which he unlocks and locks with an easy flick of his wand.

“Are you supposed to be able to do that?”

“Sure. I got permission from whoever told you you could go into the forest unsupervised.” Yuuri winks at him.

“Psst.”

Viktor looks around for the source of the whisper; the pitch is deserted, lit only by the mounted lights on the stands and the moon. Yuuri does the same; he puts his hand on Viktor’s arm.

“Psst. Yuuri.”

“Phichit?” Yuuri turns around and looks under the nearest stand. He pokes at nothing with his wand; nothing yelps, and Phichit’s head appears, floating in mid-air. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to mount my satellite dish, can you distract Madam Ronan?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri says at the same moment Viktor starts to ask why Phichit is hiding from Madam Ronan, why he is out here, and where he got the invisibility cloak. He gets none of those questions out; as Phichit pulls the cloak over his head again and vanishes, Yuuri grabs Viktor’s hand and hauls him towards the center of the pitch.

“Distraction,” he mutters. “Shit, what do we do—”

“Well,” Viktor says, “we could blow up the—”

“Phichit Chulanont!”

At the sound of Madam Ronan’s furious voice, Yuuri shoves Viktor down onto the grass. Viktor doesn’t have any time to ask why, because Yuuri flings himself on top of him. He is very heavy. And firm.

“What are we doing?” Viktor whispers.

“Just look guilty,” Yuuri whispers back, his head bent so close that Viktor can see each individual and perfect eyelash. He puts his hand on Viktor’s cheek, and for a moment Viktor thinks _oh god it’s happening,_ but it does not happen. Yuuri’s lips remain not on his.

Viktor has no idea whether Madam Ronan will be distracted, but he might never focus on anything but Yuuri’s face ever again.

“Phichit owes me so hard,” Yuuri mutters, just as Madam Ronan, boots crunching over the grass, comes into sight. “Why does he always have to do things like this—”

“Mr. Katsuki,” Madam Ronan says. She kneels down beside them, her expression severe. They say she’s related to McGonagall. Viktor believes it. “What exactly are you and Mr. Nikiforov doing?”

“Uh,” Yuuri says.

“Yuuri was showing me the pitch,” Viktor says. He makes no attempt to even sound like he’s telling the truth.

“Was he,” Madam Ronan says. Her voice is so dry it might spontaneously combust. “Well, Mr. Katsuki, may I recommend you confine your tours of the quidditch to daylight hours, before curfew.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And if you have questions about the pitch, Mr. Nikiforov,” she adds, “I would be happy to answer them for you.”

“I think Yuuri’s explained it to me very thoroughly.”

“I’m sure he has,” Madam Ronan mutters. “In my day we used broom closets.” She sighs. “Off with both of you, before I have to give you detention. And tell Mr. Chulanont that if I find any unauthorized devices attached to this pitch, I will not be pleased.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Yuuri scrambles to his feet. While Viktor does the same, he bows to Madam Ronan, and then before Viktor can say anything he seizes his wrist and starts dragging him back towards the castle.

“What about Phichit?” Viktor whispers as Yuuri breaks into a run. He is fast. Viktor’s arm is going to be wrenched off. “Should we help him?”

“Phichit knows what he’s doing, don’t worry,” Yuuri whispers back. “Let’s get inside before anyone _else_ asks us what we were doing.”

Viktor would rather have Yuuri give him a very thorough tour of the nearest broom closet, but Yuuri is bright red and  walking very fast. Now probably isn’t the time. But Viktor is a terrible flier and will need more lessons (lots more lessons) so he figures there will be plenty of opportunities.

“Sorry about that,” Yuuri says. “Madam Ronan won’t say anything, don’t worry, I just figured it was the easiest way to get her attention without doing anything that would get us expelled.”

“They wouldn’t expel me for a few explosions,” Viktor says. “They haven’t yet, anyway.”

Yuuri grins at him.

“Do you want me to walk you back to your dorm? Just in case there’s prefects patrolling…”

“Sure,” Viktor says. Yuuri has not actually let go of Viktor’s hand yet. Viktor is willing to go pretty much anywhere with him to keep that from happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you: i want them to kiss  
> me: lol nope
> 
> comments are very much appreciated :)


	9. nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please go read [cary's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thishasbeencary/pseuds/thishasbeencary) fics and congratulate her she's doing great at life

Yuuri is supposed to be working on his capstone during his free period. Yuuri is supposed to be setting a good example as a prefect and as quidditch captain. Yuuri has midterms in three weeks. But since Yuuri’s already broken curfew, skipped a mandatory feast, and accidentally started a number of terrible and embarrassing rumors about what he and Viktor might have been doing out on the quidditch pitch, he gives up. He’s essentially a PSA for how not to be at this point.

Also, his dreams last night had been a mixture of sweaty fantasies about an alternative universe where Viktor was into him and nightmares where Viktor haughtily informed him he didn’t date anyone without a six pack and biceps like a troll. After carefully examining himself in the mirror, Yuuri’s concluded he has a four pack at best (and only when he sucks in his stomach). So now he’s planking in the grass by the lake. It’s freezing outside. People keep stopping to stare at him.

“Woof.”

Vicchan is sitting on Yuuri’s back while he planks, because Vicchan understands Yuuri and his needs.

Hogwarts is bleak in winter. Two weeks into November, it’s as if the winter winds have blown away all the color: the trees are grey with bare branches, the ground is covered in dry, scraggly, faded yellow grass, and the lake reflects the ever-cloudy sky. It depresses Yuuri, who is used to both milder weather in Hasetsu and wild, whirling storms at Mahoutokoro. _At least it’s only until Christmas,_ he thinks as he shifts into a sideways, one armed plank so that he can pull his scarf over his face. _They make it look like paradise in the brochures…who builds a school in Scotland?_

(He’d tried to go flying this morning, but Madam Ronan had seen him coming out onto the pitch.)

Lost in bitterness over the deceptiveness of Hogwart’s advertising, Yuuri doesn’t see Makkachin until she bowls him over.

“Hey, girl,” Yuuri says. He tries to push Makkachin off, fails, and resigns himself to being licked. “What are you doing?”

“Woof.”

Yuuri looks around; he doesn’t see Viktor anywhere, and it’s not like Viktor is particularly stealthy. Makkachin lets him up; now that Yuuri isn’t actively working out, he realizes he can’t feel his ears. Slytherin’s next match isn’t until after the holidays. And it’ll be warm inside.

“Come on, Makkachin. You can watch me do my homework.”

Both dogs follow Yuuri back up to the castle.

So far, Yuuri’s plan to make a broomstick have gone poorly. He’s managed to find a rudimentary set of instructions in a book about the history of magical transportation; broomsticks have improved significantly since the seventeenth century, but Yuuri still hasn’t figured out how to replicate the speed and maneuverability of modern broomsticks, and he’s hoping that _doing_ the magic instead of reading about it will be more effective.

The first step involves soaking the wood in a potion to make hold spells better, so Yuuri collects his cauldron and heads for the dungeons.

Potions is Yuuri’s favorite magical subject, because no one ever has to make a potion on the spot or demonstrate brewing in front of the whole class. There are very few ways Yuuri can sabotage himself in Potions. He collects ingredients from the cupboard, starts a fire, and gives both Vicchan and Makkachin a treat. Then he draws a magical barrier between the dogs and the cauldrons so that they won’t knock into him or the table while he’s brewing.

“Oh. It’s you, piggy.”

“Hey, Yurio.”

“Don’t call me Yurio!” Yuri is set up at the neighboring table, potions kit and papers spread messily all around his cauldron.

“Sure,” Yuuri says. “Are you remediating?”

Judging by Yuri’s face—he looks like he’s just swallowed something slimy and wriggling—he is. Yuuri wonders what he messed up in class.  Professor Mudwort, their Potions instructor, takes safety extremely seriously, so it’s possible he made a minor error like not casting a Goggle Charm beforehand. Then again, there are burn marks on the side of Yuri’s cauldron.

Yuuri decides to leave him alone. He’d bombed a Charms test after his first quidditch match at Hogwarts so badly he remediated for two months straight. He remembers in excruciating detail how much that had sucked.

The rats have to be skinned first, a task Yuuri hates, and then they have to be deboned, a task Yuuri hates even more. He sets the skinless, boneless rats in a bowl with the mugwort, willow bark, and ground Mandrake; the bones he grinds to a powder with a mortar and pestle. He tips it all into the cauldron, along with cedar sap and hippogriff feathers, and ramps up the flames until they turn from orange to blue.

“Bring to a boil, then stir counterclockwise six times and clockwise twice. Simmer for twenty minutes, then add four tiger eyes and a pinch of saffron…monitor on medium heat for five hours.”

“What are you making?”

“Magic adhesion fluid.”

“What?”

“It’s a potion to make spells stick better. They soak wood in it to make brooms.”

“Wait, really?” Yuri throws down his ladle. A few drops of his potion splatter onto the table and sizzle; Yuuri winces. Yuri’s going to be remediating until he graduates if he doesn’t slow down. “Can I see?”

“Sure.”

Yuri comes over and peers into the cauldron, where the potion is starting to throw off smoke. Right now it looks like pig slop and smells like mulch, but Yuuri still has to haul Yuri back before he can get too close—the potion is delicate enough that breathing on it might damage it. Plus, it’s starting to bubble and Yuuri’s pretty sure Yuri still isn’t using eye protection.

“They seriously use this to make brooms?”

“Yeah. And lots of other magical devices, I guess.” Yuuri shrugs. “It’s kind of an old recipe, though. Broom manufacturers don’t exactly publish their trade secrets.”

“There’s a broom workshop in Russia that does private tours,” Yuri says. “You have to know someone, though. Viktor is going to take me over break.”

“Oh, that’s nice of him.”

“His dad is making him do it. Viktor never does anything over break, he just lies around from his birthday to New Year’s in his pajamas. It’s disgusting.”

“When’s his birthday?”

“December 25th. Didn’t he tell you?”

“No?”

“Tch.” Yuri glances down at Yuuri’s notes, which are in Japanese, and frowns. “When’s your birthday? And read me this recipe.”

Yuuri obediently tells him, then reads him the instructions, down to the final sprinkling of ashes from a young tree, burned exactly twenty-seven minutes prior to addition. Old potions rely on homemade ingredients more, Yuuri’s noticed; he guesses it’s easier for modern brewers to buy whatever obscure ingredients they need. It makes the brewing process less precise, and the resulting potions tend to behave unpredictably. _But at least I don’t have to smuggle anything into Hogwarts illegally. Unlike some people._

(Phichit had laughed and laughed when the Hufflepuff girl who dumped pumpkin juice on Viktor had sat down with Yuuri at breakfast to ask if he’d really been caught naked on the quidditch pitch with Viktor. He’s dead to Yuuri now.)

“Hey, careful,” Yuuri says. The potion is boiling—it’s turned a deep mahogany color and the smoke coming off it is blue—and it’s spattering all over the inside of the cauldron. Yuuri throws up a charm to deflect them back in. “If it gets in your eyes it’ll be bad.”

Yuri backs up immediately.

“Why didn’t you cast any safety spells before you started brewing?”

“It takes too long! I have to get out of here. Professor Mugwort says I can’t play at the match next week unless I brew this stupid Color-Change Cream _correctly.”_ The last word Yuri spits out in Professor Mugwort’s American accent. “What’s the point of color-change potions? We have charms.”

“The potions last longer and can be used more than once?”

“You sound like Viktor. Ugh. He offered to _help_ me.”

“Really?” Yuuri asks. Does Viktor also do Potions tutoring? Should Yuuri pretend not to understand Potions? The Muggle Studies tactic has worked so far.

“He’s shitty at brewing,” Yuri says, smirking. “His cauldron is all burnt. He tried to dye his hair with a Color-Change Cream once, and all his hair fell out. He was bald. I have pictures.”

“Should I make some for his birthday?” Yuuri asks, mind racing. “What color was he trying to dye it?”

“Both of you are gross! Piggy. Show me how to slice these butterbeans.”

 

* * *

 

“Okay, I now call this meeting of the Cyber Army to order.”

“Are you holding a meeting to break school rules?”

“Today’s agenda includes tactics of attrition, heist planning, and ideas on how to get a working Game of Thrones stream,” Phichit continues. “Secretary Lee, are you ready to record.”

Seung-gil grunts.

“Why are you doing this in my room?” Yuuri’s tired, sweaty, and has rat blood stains on his shirt. What he wants is to lie down and die, but no, his room is crammed full of students wearing tshirts with frowning emojis on them. He deposits a sleepy Vicchan by the fire and flops down on the floor between Seung-gil and Erwin.

“Plausible deniability, I don’t want to go down for this if we’re caught.”

“Hey!”

“Yuuri doesn’t like Game of Thrones,” Phichit explains. (Someone says, “You monster,” loudly). “He’s a traitor to the cause, but he’s our man on the inside, so I’m letting it pass.”

“I’m not your man on the inside!” Technically Yuuri’s _parents_ are smuggling in Phichit’s parts. Yuuri’s just pretending the packages arriving in the Owlery don’t exist.

“Are you gonna report us?”

“…no?”

“See? You’re a prefect. You’re working against the man.”

Yuuri groans. Arguing with Phichit is fruitless. Phichit reads the comments on YouTube videos for fun. He has the mental stamina of Yuuri’s thighs. “Fine.”

He leans back against the  wall as the meeting begins. ‘Tactics of attrition’ turns out to be an extensive letter writing campaign; ‘heist planning’ turns out to be Phichit’s continued attempts to smuggle in parts for his capstone, into which he appears to have inducted half the school; apparently three different people have tried the Room of Requirement for a working Game of Thrones stream and no one has been successful. Though one girl who tried was able to get the room to perfectly recreate the Iron Throne, and is extremely irritated that she couldn’t take a selfie.

“Okay,” Phichit says, “Glitter howlers, yea or nay?”

“Yea!”

“Cool. Who wants to write to the Board of Governors to point out that the top magical schools worldwide all allow the study of tech integration?”

“Me!”

Phichit unveils a giant map of Hogwarts, which he has inconveniently hung in front of the bathroom door so that Yuuri can’t even put on clothes that aren’t gross. On it he’s marked out the locations of his satellite antennas. _Isn’t Hogwarts supposed to be impossible to map,_ Yuuri wonders. _Or do they just say that because the maps can be used for evil?_

Yuuri also notes that there is one satellite dish mounted on the outside of the Astronomy Tower. He can just bet he’s going to be asked to do some mid-air maintenance in the future. The way Phichit has drafted the student body into doing his capstone for him is uncanny.

“Viktor said he’d help us try and find a weak spot in the school’s magical field,” Phichit says. “In the mean time, we need to sneak in some cell phones. I think the best time will be during the Hogsmeade trip over Valentine’s Day.”

“That’s three months away,” a fourth year Gryffindor points out.

“I know,” Phichit says, “but the phones have to be modified to receive a weaker signal, and they had to be custom ordered, and the manufacturer is backed up over the holidays. You guys can try with whatever devices you have, though.”

“Oh, Phichit, I brought some pens,” a fifth year Slytherin—a muggleborn, judging by her flannel shirt and jeans—says. “Anyone need a pen or paper to do their homework?”

“I thought we had to use a quill,” a first year says. “Professor Luddute took ten points from Hufflepuff yesterday when he caught me using a pencil.”

“Ten points to Hufflepuff,” Yuuri says. Everyone looks at him. “What? Professor Luddute is a dick.”

“You can transfigure a pen so it looks like a quill but still works,” Viktor says. He’s appeared in the doorway; Phichit motions for him to come in and close the door. Yuuri moves over as Viktor picks his way across the room and squeezes into what little space there is by Yuuri’s side. “Here, hand me those pens, I’ll do it now.”

“Hey,” Yuuri whispers.  
  
“Hey,” Viktor whispers back. He nudges Yuuri with his shoulder. “Yuri told me it’s your birthday this month.”

“Yeah, right before midterms start.”

Viktor grins at him. His hand ends up on Yuuri’s knee while he transfigures the pens; Yuuri pretends very studiously not to notice, just in case it’s an accident. A tiny, hyper realistic-skeleton is dangling from his ear. Does Viktor wear Halloween earrings in November for the irony?

“Okay! One last thing,” Phichit says. “We’re not gonna meet until next year, since midterms are coming up and we have to maintain the illusion of caring. Secretary Lee?”

Seung-gil holds up a binder and reads from it in a monotone. “The protest.”

“Right, we’re gonna be protesting the Department of Magical Education’s curriculum meeting. It’s gonna be on the the 30th. Anyone who wants to come, it’s being held in the teacher’s lounge, we’re going to be there to complain about the tyranny of archaic practices based on anti-muggle sentiment.”

“Sounds like fun,” Viktor says.

That does not sound like fun, but Yuuri will have to go, anyway, for solidarity and so that in an emergency he can totally pretend he was rounding up students for disciplinary action. Not that he’ll tell Phichit this. Phichit is already right about too many things already.

Finally, the meeting is over, and people start to filter out. Viktor distributes the now-feathered pens to the first and second years who don’t have them. Phichit confers with Seung-gil for a long time before clapping him on the shoulder. He leaves with Erwin, who started the meeting looking confused and now looks like the bad end of a Confundus Charm. Presumably he’s going to explain to Erwin why the school should allow them to have cell phones.

“See you later,” Yuuri says.

“Oh, I thought I’d stay,” Viktor says cheerfully.

Yuuri hears “I knew it!” whispered somewhere behind him. He yanks his dorm room door open and starts waving people out. A couple of fourth years actually wink at him. They’re children. How dare they. He slams the door behind him and groans.

Viktor, oblivious, flops down on Yuuri’s bed. Has he heard the rumors? But Viktor must not care about gossip. He’s unique.

“I didn’t see you at dinner,” he says.

“I had to watch my magical adhesion potion, I was down in the dungeons studying for Defense Against The Dark Arts.”

“Well, you didn’t miss much. Everyone looks exhausted.” Viktor yawns. “I’ve been hiding out in Dr. Munich’s office doing calculations all day.”

“Dr. Munich?”

“I needed a graphing calculator.”

Yuuri strips off his bloodied shirt and lays down on the bed beside Viktor. He sucks his his stomach a little, just in case his dream was wrong and a four pack is acceptable.

“Phichit’s very intelligent, isn’t he?” Viktor says. “Do you think he would mind teaching me some things? It would add to my research.”

“He won’t mind, he’ll talk about tech and magic for hours. He started trying to enchant kitchen appliances as soon as he had a wand.”

“He must have very understanding parents.”

“I mean, they own a company that makes appliances,” Yuuri says, “so they were pretty happy he was interested in the family business.”

“What about you?” Viktor asks. “Were they disappointed you didn’t want to run a—a—what was it called?”

“An onsen. No, they were fine with it. My mom’s best friend played for Japan, so she started teaching me when I was kid. She was tough, too. I had to take dance lessons before she’d even let me on a training broom.”

“Really? What kind of dance? I had lessons too.”

Yuuri’s been roasted for having ballet lessons to help him fly at quidditch camp—repeatedly—but Viktor is immediately interested and makes Yuuri explain to him what all the positions in ballet are.

“My parents put me a ballroom class when I was younger,” Viktor says. “Supposedly it’s a life skill. I think they were worried I’d waste away in a lab if they didn’t force me out once in a while.”

“Hey, did you really blow up a cauldron in Potions?”

“Everything Yurio tells you is a lie!”

“Were you really bald?” Yuuri measures the height of Viktor’s vast forehead with his fingers. Viktor shrieks and bats his hands away.

“It grew back! I condition it everyday!”

“It could be a wig stuck to your head.”

“We can’t be friends anymore, Yuuri. I’ll never recover from this betrayal.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Yuuri brushes Viktor’s hair off his face; his fingers are behind Viktor’s ear before he realizes what he’s doing. He jerks his hand away and says the first thing that comes to mind—did he really just touch Viktor with his filthy, dead rat hands? Yuuri’s washed them, but still. “What do you want for your birthday?”

“Hmm?” Viktor yawns. “I don’t know yet. Ask me later.” He closes his eyes.

Yuuri watches him for is probably a creepy number of minutes before he realizes that Viktor is asleep. On his bed. And he’s pretty. _I should wake him up,_ Yuuri thinks as he refills Vicchan’s water bowl, puts his dirty clothes in the hamper, reorganizes his trunk, and starts cleaning the enormous glass window behind his bed. He catches a glimpse of the giant squid passing by. _I’ll wake him up soon,_ Yuuri thinks as he does not wake Viktor up and instead takes a shower.

When he finally emerges, completed cleansed of any trace of dead rat, Viktor has not woken up and left of his own accord. He’s still there. And he’s rolled on his side so that his skeleton earring is squished under his cheek, which can’t be comfortable.

“Vitya?” Yuuri jostles Viktor’s shoulder. “Hey. Wake up.”

“Mmph.”

“You’re still in my dorm.”

“Oh.” Viktor blinks at him. “Can I sleep over? The Tower is so far.”

Yuuri’s not going to make Viktor walk an entire ten minutes back to his dorm. There are stairs in Ravenclaw Tower. He’s not a _monster._

“Sure,” Yuuri says. He deserves an Oscar for managing to sound normal and not deeply gay. “Good night.”

(The next morning at breakfast, Viktor casually tells Yuuri that he drools while he sleeps. There are other people there. Yuuri spends the rest of the morning pretending—badly—to not hear any of the rumors running wild in the jungle of Hogwarts gossip.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those of you who keep asking when they will kiss:
> 
> currently it is November in fic time. the kiss happens in May, fic time. right now we're averaging 1-2 chapters per month of fic time...you can do the math :)
> 
> i've just realized that this means this fic might surpass regency au, which currently holds my record for "slowest burn", which took 35k to get to the first kiss. whoops. y'all knew i was like this.
> 
> you can find me [on tumblr](http://pencilwalla.tumblr.com/) or [on pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/seventhstar) or [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/starofseventh)

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to thank everyone on discord who contributed to this, whether with support, great ideas, or screaming. especially spooky and meg, who read it and told me to keep going.
> 
> comment please! the faster you comment the faster i write the sooner we get to the parts where they kiss


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